Barometers

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	How many people have suffered harm as a result of contact with mercury barometers.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, since 2005, the chemical incidents surveillance system has reported four domestic incidents involving mercury spills from barometers. Five people were confirmed as having been exposed, of whom one exhibited symptoms. However, mercury released from barometers persists in the environment and, as such, can indirectly lead to risks to human health, such as children's mental development. The proposed restrictions on the sale of new mercury instruments are a proportionate response to those concerns.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I am amazed that the Minister describes it as a proportionate response, given that new mercury barometers consume some 78 pounds of mercury, that the Government still intend that mercury can be used in dentistry for filling purposes and that, according to an Answer from the Minister, 0.8 tonnes of mercury go into the atmosphere as a result of cremations. Surely the Minister must recognise that this is a disproportionate response, which will destroy businesses making mercury barometers? Would he not like to reconsider the Government's position?

Lord Rooker: No, my Lords, certainly not. Given the way in which the noble Lord asked that question, one would assume that nothing is being done about the two examples that he gave. That is not the case. For example, there are restrictions and proposals to reduce the amount of mercury in dental fillings, and there are proposals to restrict mercury emissions from new crematoria and to restrict by 50 per cent mercury emissions from existing crematoria. In the past three decades, UK emissions of mercury have declined from 63 tonnes to 7.6 tonnes, a reduction of 89 per cent, which is consistent with both the European and the global effort to reduce the use of mercury where there are viable alternatives.

Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I declare an interest. Is the Minister aware that mercury has been used throughout the clock-making and repairing businesses for centuries in connection with compensated pendulums? Will the European legislation affecting barometers also affect clock-making and repairing businesses where there is particular concern, as they have received no guidance on this matter from his department? Is he also aware that, unlike compact fluorescent light bulbs or CFLs, which contain mercury and cannot be disposed of as household waste, the mercury in a barometer or a pendulum bob is retained on the premises in the manufacturing and repairing businesses?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, I do not have a briefing on clock makers, and this is the first time in the past few months since this issue arose that it has been raised. I will take advice and contact the noble Lord. He also made a reference to the low energy light bulb. The average mercury barometer contains between 100 and 600 grammes of mercury. That is 25,000 to 150,000 times more than is contained in an energy saving light bulb. I am not arguing that; they will have a limited life in due course anyway, and there will be a proper way of disposing of them.
	If anyone thinks that it does not matter; the mercury is persistent. It will remain in the atmosphere and it will vaporise. That is why in half the lakes in Sweden—that is 50,000 lakes—by and large the fish are contaminated, because the mercury will drift to the north part of the planet.

Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I am one of the millions of people walking around with a mouthful of amalgam fillings, and I am a dentist who worked with amalgam in the days when we handled mercury with our bare hands, not with rubber gloves, as people do now. Does the Minister not think that there is too much stress on this issue? As I understand it, although the number of fillings has reduced, the amount of mercury used in amalgam fillings has not changed.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, as I said, the attempt worldwide is to reduce and avoid the use of mercury where possible. It is not being mined any more, as far as I know. There are plenty of stocks, because of recycling. But the fact is that barometers in people's homes are quite safe, unless, of course, there is an accident.

Noble Lords: Oh!

Lord Rooker: My Lords, no one is arguing that—they are quite safe. The industry has a two-year derogation. The use of scientific instruments, where mercury is vital because there is no alternative, will continue. The use of special switches on lifeboats, in which only mercury proved to be 100 per cent effective, will, as far as I am aware, continue. The restrictions will apply where there is a viable alternative—and there is a more accurate and viable alternative for barometers.

Lord Cotter: My Lords, I understand from previous answers that small firms will be able to carry on working on antique barometers. Given that regulations are slipped in some years ahead—certainly without much notice—as is often the case with Governments, can the Minister give an assurance that there will be no such regulations to stop small firms carrying on doing this work indefinitely? As the work is designated as allegedly dangerous, can I have an assurance that there will be no impact on small firms' insurance premiums and the way that they conduct their business under the health and safety regulations?

Lord Rooker: My Lords, the effect on its insurance of any company using a chemical is a matter for that company and the insurance company. It has nothing to do with this regulation. This regulation does not make mercury less unsafe—it is unsafe anyway. The fact of the matter is that the European Parliament agreed by two fairly substantial votes at its plenary session on 9 and 12 July to what the Commission wanted anyway and adopted the common position. In due course, that will be the case. We have a two-year derogation for the antique barometer trade, in which adjustments can be made. Repair work on antique barometers will continue—there is a derogation in that respect. Other instruments, including aneroid barometers made by some manufacturers, are more accurate and can be just as important a furniture item. As far as we know, there are very few barometer manufacturers in Europe—there are only three small firms in this country and one in France.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, given that we have been talking about mercury in the mouth, would it be worth emphasising that it is quite safe to eat mercury? If, for instance, a barometer is broken in the mouth, there is no real danger from mercury poisoning. Of course, a rectal thermometer is dangerous, if broken.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, all the advice that I have received is that mercury is a highly toxic substance. It is persistent, and we do not want any new sources put into circulation. The four incidents to which I referred involved the need for furniture to be destroyed and hospitalisation. The whole point is that mercury is an unsafe chemical, but, where there is no exposure, there is no problem. Fire brigades support this view, because of the vaporisation of mercury in fires. This is a major safety issue. I am not arguing that this is the be-all and end-all. No one could do that, given the tonnes of mercury used in the European Union and the relatively small amount used in barometers.

House of Lords: Prayers

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: asked the Chairman of Committees:
	Whether he will arrange for a committee of the House to consider whether representatives of churches and faiths in addition to the Church of England might take part in the Prayers read at the start of each sitting of the House.

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as the House will know, Prayers are read at the start of each sitting of the House by one of the Lords Spiritual. The Lords Spiritual sit as Members of this House by virtue of their being representatives of the established church. If the noble Lord wishes to submit a written proposal to change this arrangement, I will ensure it receives consideration within the Procedure Committee.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. I declare an interest as a minister of the Methodist Church. I express our appreciation of the immense contribution made by the Bishops over many years, but is it not time for us to recognise the new diversity in the outside community? By having worship in this House according to different faiths, would we not send out a message to those faiths that, under the traditions of the Christian church, we are encompassing them as well? There are many people of different faiths and no faith in this House. Will the Chairman of Committees consider setting up a small group to discuss this?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I echo the noble Lord's words about the contribution from the Bishops' Benches in this House. We are very glad to have them here and they contribute a great deal to our deliberations. Fortunately, the future composition of the House is not for me. However, as I said in my original reply, if the noble Lord were to write and his letter were to receive support, that would be a matter for the Procedure Committee.

Lord Borrie: My Lords—

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, there is time to hear from both noble Lords. Let us hear from the Cross Benches.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, I am most obliged. Does the noble Lord recollect that His Royal Highness, Charles, the Prince of Wales, has on many occasions spoken of the title Defender of the Faith, enjoyed by British monarchs for nearly 500 years, not as a reference to the pamphleteering zeal of his predecessor, Henry VIII, but as an acknowledgement that in this century we are a multi-faith community? Bearing in mind that the established Church of England has no status as such in Wales or Scotland, does the noble Lord agree that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, is most appropriate?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, as I said, the Bishops are Members of this House in light of the fact that they are members of the established church. That may or may not apply to Scotland or Wales, but that is the fact of the matter at the moment.

Lord Anderson of Swansea: My Lords, does my noble friend accept that even those not from an Anglican tradition—indeed, even those of us from Wales—recognise the profundity and poetry of the current Prayers, which form a remarkable and acceptable introduction to the parliamentary day? Does he also accept that it would be unwise to tinker with matters now while there is a debate about the future of this House?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Lord on his second question, and I do not intend to get involved in such a debate.

The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, your Lordships have before you on Prayer duty today a Bishop who was born as the son of a Congregationalist manse to a father who was previously a Methodist local preacher. Therefore, does the Chairman of Committees agree that this Bishop is either an ecclesiastical fidget or the living embodiment of the very breadth that the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, seeks?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has put it very well indeed. As I understand it, the Bishops speak for all faiths in this House.

Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, does the Chairman of Committees accept that in the Scottish Parliament Prayers are given by representatives of all the faiths, and even on occasion by humanists? Does he think that that is a good idea?

Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, no, basically. We are not the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish Parliament does not have the Bishops sitting in it.

Smoking: Churches and Cathedrals

Baroness Cumberlege: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether they will exempt churches and cathedrals from the requirement to display "no smoking" signs.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, the requirement for smoke-free premises, including places of worship, to display "no smoking" signs is enshrined in primary legislation that was passed into law last year. The Government do not have powers to exempt specific types of premises from the requirement to display "no smoking" signs, if they are required to be smoke-free under the Health Act 2006. Churches are not exempted from signage requirements under smoke-free legislation in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Is she aware that in 1650 the Catholic Church passed a papal bull that prohibited smoking in churches and cathedrals and the taking of snuff? For over 400 years, that law has been obeyed without the need for any signs. Will the Minister revisit the very prescriptive guidance that is given to churches and places of worship in smoke-free England about the size of the sign, the wording of the sign, which is very secular, and the places where it has to be displayed, with a view to dispensing with these signs altogether?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I was not aware of the papal bull, but that is an interesting fact. No, the Government are not going to review this at present. We have declared that we are going to review the smoke-free legislation in three years' time and that is what we will do. In the mean time, I am very grateful for the opportunity to explain to noble Lords what is required. The requirement is for an A5 sign—that is half an A4 piece of paper—saying, "No smoking. It is against the law to smoke in St Stephen's", or St Mary the Virgin or whatever the name of the church may be. It does not have to be displayed on a great big notice board at the front of the church; it can be just inside the church on a notice board. I do not think it is a particularly onerous charge for churches, but I hear what the noble Baroness is saying.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we have just heard the "no smoking" sign described as secular. What would a non-secular "no smoking" sign be—"God asks you not to smoke"?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, that is an interesting topic for a future debate.

Baroness Butler-Sloss: My Lords, does the requirement apply, as I assume it does, to mosques, to synagogues and to temples? Further—and this may have to be looked at in two years' time—is there any evidence that anyone has ever smoked in a place of worship? If there is no such evidence, surely such places should then be exempted.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, this regulation applies to all places of worship. The Department of Health has consequently reached out to all faiths. It has had discussions with the Church of England, as requested. No other faith has asked for such discussions, but we are very happy to have those discussions, if necessary. Have people smoked in church? I think some gentlemen of the road, for example, may well have smoked in churches in the past. But here we are talking about a cultural change. It is encouraging people not to smoke. I hear what noble Lords are saying, but I can assure them that in three years' time it will be reviewed.

Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, does incense and ting-a-ling come into the ban on smoke generally?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, ting-a-ling is exempted.

The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, would the Minister publicly endorse the rather helpful advice given by some officials and by the previous Minister of State at the Department of Health, Caroline Flint, that local authorities are encouraged to take a fair and proportionate approach to the enforcement of this legislation, recognising that the smoking of tobacco in churches and cathedrals has been much less prevalent than the legal burning of incense, which happens very frequently in Norwich Cathedral—I am glad to say—and agree that a punitive approach would be highly counterproductive?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, indeed, we are not talking about a punitive approach. We are talking about an educational and non-confrontational approach focused on raising awareness and understanding to ensure compliance. It might be helpful if I read out the report of the relevant Merits Committee at the time, which said,
	"We note the extensive consultation that took place in preparing these regulations and commend the Department of Health's pragmatic response to the issues raised in relation to the size and positioning of the notices".

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords—

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour side.

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, reverting to the Roman Catholic Church for a moment, did noble friend see the report in a recent issue of the Tablet, which said that a number of Roman Catholic priests are tackling the problem of "no smoking" signs by putting them up in English and in Latin, complying perfectly with the law, the only dispute being on the correct form of Latin? One prefers, "Non licet fumare" and another, "Luminarium nullus". Will my noble friend give some guidance on that matter and commend the church, first, for complying with the law and, secondly, for keeping Latin alive?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: Gaudeamus, my Lords.

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, is the Minister not slightly concerned—

Lord Rooker: My Lords, it is the turn of the Lib Dems.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I hope I have greater success than with my previous Question. Does the Minister agree that this is a nonsensical regulation that attacks no habit? Is it not time that the Government immediately went through that? Could it be in contravention of listed building consent in some places?

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, we are talking about a cultural change. When the Bill passed through this House last year there was not one single amendment about this issue. Does it contravene historic monuments legislation? No; a small piece of paper on a notice board inside the church does not contravene such legislation.

Lord Lawson of Blaby: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will permit me, may I ask the Minister whether she is not slightly concerned about the profound lack of logic in the Government's position? In the past, when smoking was permitted in some public places but not in others, it might have been a help to the public to have a notice to indicate where smoking was not permitted. Now, when smoking is not permitted in any public place, there is no need for notices to warn people, but notices are required.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, that is an interesting point, but I do not think it is illogical. The Government, with the support of many noble Lords, are trying to bring about a cultural change so that we have a healthier nation that does not smoke.

Earl Cathcart: My Lords—

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords—

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it is the turn of this corner.

Lord Rooker: My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches. We have to be fair.

Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, the Minister may not be aware that last week I was wheeling through the cloisters of Westminster Abbey and I saw a cigarette butt stuck in the stones, so I assure her that some people must be smoking and it may still be there.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that information.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the Minister said that no amendment was moved in Committee on the Health Bill. I took part in all the clauses referring to smoking. There was a lot of debate about signage, but noble Lords taking part did not believe that anybody, especially the Government, would be stupid enough to insist that there should be "no smoking" signs in churches.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I, too, participated in that debate. I remember it well and know that the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, raised this issue. She spoke of her concern that such notices would deface any building. I hope that at that time I was able to allay her fears by explaining that such notices would not deface buildings.

Schools: IGCSE

Lord Lucas: asked Her Majesty's Government:
	Whether the results of International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) examinations sat in the United Kingdom will be included in this year's key stage 4 performance tables.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the results of International General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations sat in the United Kingdom will not be included in this year's key stage 4 performance tables, as those qualifications are not accredited by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for use in maintained schools. It is, however, open to the two awarding bodies of the IGCSE to seek such accreditation, and proper consideration will be given if they do so.

Lord Lucas: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that, but was it not a daft Answer? We now have the prospect of performance tables that will show some of the best schools in England failing to give their children an adequate education merely because of the amour propre of the QCA in not admitting a particular qualification to the league tables. We may not wish to offer that qualification in state schools, but surely, to provide proper information to parents about how schools are doing, we should reflect the examinations that those schools take and not some quasi-religious decision taken by a government agency.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, this has nothing whatever to do with the amour propre of the QCA. It is open to the two awarding bodies that offer the IGCSE to submit that qualification to the QCA for accreditation in the manner required of all other qualifications. If they do so, the QCA will consider the request.

Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, does the Minister accept that many schools are attracted to the IGCSE because they are not convinced that GCSEs stretch and challenge the full range of students? When that happened with A-levels, the Government agreed that extra sections and harder questions should be put into them. Will he consider doing the same thing with GCSEs? While he is about it, will he just scrap the discredited league tables?

Lord Adonis: No, my Lords.

Standing Orders (Public Business)

Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
	Moved, That the Standing Orders relating to public business be amended as follows:
	Leave out sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of paragraph (1) and insert:
	"(a) except in the case of a draft remedial order or remedial order laid under Schedule 2 to the Human Rights Act 1998, or a draft order proposed to be made under Part 1 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, or a subordinate provisions order made or proposed to be made under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, there has been laid before the House the report thereon of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments;
	(b) in the case of a draft order proposed to be made under Part 1 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, or a subordinate provisions order made or proposed to be made under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001, there has been laid before the House the report thereon of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; and"
	In paragraph (1), leave out from "but excluding any Order in Council" to the end and insert:
	"but excluding any remedial order or draft remedial order under Schedule 2 to the Human Rights Act 1998, and any draft order proposed to be made under Part 1 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006 and any subordinate provisions order made or proposed to be made under the Regulatory Reform Act 2001; and"
	In paragraph (2), leave out "any statutory instrument made by a member of the Scottish Executive or by the National Assembly for Wales" and insert "any statutory instrument made by the Scottish Ministers or otherwise under an Act or Act of the Scottish Parliament or by the Welsh Ministers".—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Therefore, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Offender Management Bill

Read a third time.
	Clause 3 [Power to make arrangements for the provision of probation services]:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendment No. 1:
	Clause 3, page 3, line 31, leave out "designate individuals" and insert "authorise individuals under section 10(2) to act"

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, these amendments are technical in nature. They were identified as necessary by parliamentary counsel during his final proofreading of the Bill. We hope that they will be entirely uncontroversial. Amendment No. 1 simply brings the wording in Clause 3 into line with that used elsewhere in the Bill, so that we talk consistently about individuals being "authorised" rather than "designated".
	Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 to Clause 10 and Amendment No. 13 to Schedule 3 clarify the definitions of providers of probation services and officers of providers of probation services, to enable consequential amendments to work properly.
	Amendments Nos. 8 and 9 apply to the offences related to prison security in Clauses 25 and 26. Their effect is simply to bring consistency to the way in which "specified" is dealt with in the various subsections. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 3 agreed to.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: moved Amendment No. 2:
	After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
	"Model contracts
	(1) The Secretary of State may produce model contracts for the purposes of seeking tenders for, and agreeing, contractual arrangements under section 3(2).
	(2) If the Secretary of State exercises his power under subsection (1) he shall produce different model contracts for private and voluntary sector providers.
	(3) A model contract may be amended or withdrawn at any time other than during the course of tendering.
	(4) There shall be published in the London Gazette—
	(a) a copy of any model contract produced under subsection (1),(b) a copy of any model contract amended under subsection (3),(c) a notice of the withdrawal of any model contract."

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, the Companion to the Standing Orders says that amendments may be moved at Third Reading. The principal purposes are to clarify any remaining uncertainties, to improve the drafting, and,
	"to enable the government to fulfil undertakings given at earlier stages of the bill".
	When we on these Benches moved the amendment on Report, I made it very clear that this was intended to give the Government a chance to tell us more about how to manage contracts and how contracts would be provided differently for different private providers of services, such as those with profits, not-for-profits and voluntary organisations.
	The Minister provided us with a very rapidly produced 25-page letter at that time, and I understood her to promise that she had given an undertaking that we would return to this on Third Reading. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said on Report that she had raised this issue in Committee and that she had also understood that the Government would come back to her before Report. I therefore press the point further today because, to our surprise, we have not heard further from the Government. I phoned the Minister's office last Wednesday to ask when we might hear further about this. The amendment was intended to be friendly and helpful. However, we have not yet heard from the Minister, nor have the next 25 pages on warm paper yet hit these Benches, so I wish to press forward on this. Indeed, the Minister said in answer to me on Report that,
	"it is important for us to come back to this".—[Official Report, 27/6/07; col. 652.]
	Let me briefly reiterate the principle. We are talking about a mixed economy in the provision of an important public service. That mixed economy will consist of some with-profit providers, some not-for-profit providers and some voluntary organisations. Some of these will be national organisations; others will be regional or local. I heard an executive of one of the potentially important for-profit providers say on Friday that, if commissioning was to be local rather than regional, his company might not be interested in applying for contracts. There are some large issues at stake here to which we have not yet had a satisfactory reply from the Government. The amendment provides the Government with an opportunity to give what I hope will be a more satisfactory reply. I beg to move.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving us another opportunity to discuss the important issue of how contractual arrangements will operate, particularly with regard to smaller providers. He is quite right that on the last occasion, to be helpful, we produced quite extensive documentation which noble Lords did not have an appropriately long time to look at. However, we hoped that they would have had sufficient time by Third Reading and that I would be able to explain the way forward to the House with this sample document in their minds. The noble Lord's amendment envisages the production of model contracts, with different models applying to providers from different sectors.
	I absolutely understand the concerns that have prompted the approach in the amendment, but it is not the right way to achieve what we all want. I shall explain why. Noble Lords will recall from our debates on Report that the National Offender Management Service is developing a contract for probation services using the concept of generic terms and conditions under which the appropriate schedules and service specifications will sit. This will allow commissioners to be clear about what they require from lead providers and from organisations to whom lead providers subcontract. This will include provisions to ensure the protection of employee rights, including the requirement to abide by the Cabinet Office code of practice on workforce matters.
	However, these contracts will, as the noble Lord has indicated, also need to cater for a range of different factors such as variations in the type, size and location of services to be delivered, so they will have to be tailored to meet the local environment in which they operate. This is vital if we are to ensure that contracts maximise community engagement, deliver local as well as regional and national priorities, and foster innovation—all of which the noble Lord and others have commented on. There can therefore be no one-size-fits-all approach, which is why the proposed model contracts are not appropriate. Nor are different approaches for different sectors the right way forward. We need a system that supports a contracting process that is fit for purpose. If, for example, we were to request a provider to do work for £1,000, the checks and documentation required should be significantly different, and perhaps less complex, than if we placed a contract for £10 million.
	The use of flexible contracts within a framework, rather than model contracts, will allow probation trusts and other providers to develop innovative ways of delivering services, which is particularly important. I know that the noble Lord, among others, has commented on what will happen about small organisations which will target their efforts on perhaps a small group of offenders or victims who may need particular help and support that others cannot provide. We would not want to drive those people from the market because they give a lot of innovation, help and support. We need to keep that richness if we can.
	Work is under way on the development of new agreements. The draft scoping document and service level agreements provided on Report, together with early stakeholder consultation—we are going out and asking people what they think about these models—are informing our thinking on which elements of the contract can be used to encourage innovation and flexibility. Detailed consultation will be held with the first wave of probation trusts as the contracts develop before formal negotiations begin.
	Although I understand absolutely the concerns that have been expressed about the process of awarding contracts and how they may put the voluntary and community sector at a disadvantage, we are determined that that should not happen. The National Offender Management Service is working with colleagues across government to look at ways of reducing the burdens and barriers to contracting for the voluntary and community sector organisations generally. NOMS is now committed to paying voluntary community service organisations on a full-cost recovery basis to ensure that they are not unwittingly subsidising public sector organisations. We have heard that theme for quite some time, and it needs to be better addressed than we perhaps have had an opportunity to do in the past.
	NOMS is supporting probation boards and trusts in its subcontracting by providing guidance and hands-on assistance on how to procure services, including the development of a generic set of terms and conditions. A wide range of commercial workshops are under way to ensure that boards and trusts provide fair and transparent tendering processes with minimum bureaucracy. NOMS is also starting work with providers from the voluntary and community sector to develop and sustain small-scale providers. We recognise that many such organisations do not want to enter into consortia or to bid for work as a provider at a national level, and we want to cater for that too.
	One of the key objectives of these reforms is to enable the voluntary and charitable sector, in all its diversity, to play a greater role in the delivery of probation services. We are determined to work closely with the sector to make sure that this happens. With these assurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, will understand that we have fully taken into account the import of what he seeks. The framework and the flexibility will better deliver what he wants from this situation—we want to achieve the same thing—than a sample contract, which may not precisely meet the needs of any given local situation. I know that that is what the noble Lord wants. With that, I hope he is content that we certainly have fulfilled our purpose at Third Reading and that we have clarified the detail, and will feel able now to withdraw his amendment.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I think that one of the anxieties at the back of the mind of the noble Lord who moved this amendment is anxiety that commissioners will squash out the ability of small organisations to innovate by the form of contract on which they insist. Is there any way small organisations can get advice about how to resist any attempt to prevent innovation? That is an anxiety of mine and, probably, of the noble Lord.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, in this consultative process we are going out to some of the small organisations. I mentioned on the previous occasion that Clinks has been very helpful in helping us to think about this. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said last time that there are of course some organisations which simply do not want to enter into large consortia. They have honed a skill for a tiny, specialist group, are doing a fantastic job and wish to preserve that as a reality.
	One of the beauties of the commissioning process is that there will be needs-based analysis, so the commissioners will have to look at how those needs are being met. Some of the specialist needs are more likely to be met by the smaller group, which might have honed its specialist skills for those needs. We are moving forward by creating a framework, getting the flexibility, looking at full cost recovery and ensuring that there are no perverse disincentives to enabling the smaller organisations to continue to thrive, but looking too at how we can get umbrella consortium bids that would encourage the others to take advantage of those opportunities. I understand what the noble Baroness is saying, and why the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is anxious. That is why the framework we have set up provides the flexibility that will ensure that that does not occur. We will have a robust suite of measures that will meet the needs.
	I agree with the noble Baroness: we have to ensure that we get the best out of those currently participating. However, we have to remember that we want to encourage more people to become involved as well, so we have to create the environment that will enable that to take place.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, there were a number of important assurances in the Minister's speech. I am conscious of how complex this set of issues is. I spent much of Friday with my noble friend Lord Shutt in a large private prison in Doncaster, and came away from that with an even greater understanding of how complex the situation is. We are asking for partnerships between national, regional and local organisations, some people who are working for for-profit organisations and others who are working for voluntary organisations. The situation demands real care and attention. Some of us will want to ensure, as this moves towards implementation, that those concerns are fully taken through.
	The Minister will also understand that many of us in this country are concerned that the system we operate is much too top-down, compared with our counterparts on the Continent and in Scandinavia. That makes it more difficult to take local and small organisations into account. In the debate on Report, the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, talked about small voluntary organisations that used to receive grants to help them with their activities. It is precisely those sorts of organisations that we are concerned about. However, I take the Minister's assurances, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 9 [Annual plans etc]:

Viscount Bridgeman: moved Amendment No. 3:
	Clause 9, page 6, line 25, leave out subsection (5) and insert—
	"(5) In subsection (4)—
	"annual plan" means a plan setting out the way in which the person required to publish the plan proposes to carry out any specified activities during the year to which the plan relates;
	"specified activities", in relation to a person with whom arrangements under sections 3(4) or (5) are made, means activities of a description specified in those arrangements for the purposes of subsection (4) above."

Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, this is a simple drafting amendment, intended to clarify the definition of "annual plans" and specify the activities referred to in the amendment my noble friend Lady Anelay moved and inserted into the Bill on Report. We are grateful for the advice of the Public Bill Office on the drafting of the amendment.
	The Bill's passage has not been smooth—at least, I suggest, not from the point of view of the Minister and her colleagues. However, we on these Benches, and others, will feel that many positive changes have been effected in your Lordships' House; changes which, if carried, would strengthen the Bill immeasurably in realigning the mode of commissioning and in ensuring that the Bill itself is revised and revitalised in the light of new reports. I urge the Minister to support other noble Lords in sending a message back to the other place that these changes are for the good, however bitter a pill that may be to swallow. I thank her for her customary assistance and engagement in the debates throughout the Bill, before she moves to at least equally distinguished pastures.
	Amendment No. 3 represents a tying up of loose ends. The work your Lordships have done on the Bill has amounted to far more than that, and I commend the amendments made in this House to another place. I beg to move.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, my task is simple: to accept the amendments. We do not agree with the arguments behind them that were made at an earlier stage, but we understand that these are tidying-up amendments. Noble Lords on the Opposition Benches have been advised on this course of action by the Public Bill Office, and it is on that basis—though without prejudice to the Government's position on the underlying policy intention—that we are happy to accept the amendments.

Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for accepting the amendment.

On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 10 [Officers of providers of probation services]:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendments Nos. 4 to 6:
	Clause 10, page 6, line 36, leave out from "under" to end of line 38 and insert "subsection (2) (and "officer", in relation to a particular provider of probation services, means a person so authorised to act as an officer of that provider)."
	Clause 10, page 6, line 39, leave out "as an officer of the relevant provider"and insert "to act as an officer of a particular provider of probation services ("the relevant provider")"
	Clause 10, page 7, line 3, leave out subsection (4)
	On Question, amendments agreed to.
	Clause 11 [National framework for qualifications of officers]:

Lord Ramsbotham: moved Amendment No. 7:
	Clause 11, page 7, line 21, at end insert—
	"( ) The probation boards and probation trusts shall not exercise their powers under section 3(2) to make contractual or other arrangements with another person unless they are satisfied that that person has complied with any guidelines published under subsection (1).
	( ) The Secretary of State shall not exercise his powers under section 3(4)(a) to make contractual or other arrangements with another person unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that that person has complied with any guidelines published under subsection (1)."

Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, this is a clarifying and tidying-up amendment, relating to the clause which states that the Secretary of State shall have regard to the need to secure that guidelines have the same effect in relation to every provider. The amendment seeks guidance particularly on training, because a number of small voluntary organisations have expressed concern that the implications of the training that is required to carry out functions for which they may be contracted need to be carefully thought through. Do they need qualifications in order to apply for a contract or can qualifications be gained after a contract has been awarded and before work starts? The clauses that we discussed earlier mention the requirement placed on the Secretary of State to issue guidelines that apply to everyone involved in delivery, whether they are public, private or not-for-profit. It is important that the many small voluntary organisations whose vital role in the management of offenders in a variety of activities has been mentioned many times during this debate are clear about the qualifications their staff will need in order to qualify for contracts. I beg to move.

Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I have put my name to the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. He is absolutely right. Small or large voluntary organisations should know the level of training that will be necessary to deal with the rather more difficult offenders whom they will be required to manage. One needs to be assured on that by the Minister. Nobody is trying to do the voluntary organisations out of the vital role they play, be they small, large or the Church. We all know the roles that they play. I am sure that there is plenty of scope for those roles to evolve into the future. We certainly hope that that is so. Perhaps the Minister will reassure us on this point.

Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, we on these Benches have made it clear during our debates in Committee and on Report that we regard training as central to the success of any rollout of contestability. The qualifications and calibre of those who deliver probation services have always been and will remain vital. We supported the Government's new Clause 11 on qualifications, which was accepted on Report. It will ensure that the Secretary of State provides through regulations a benchmark for the minimum required qualifications of those who carry out the day-to-day delivery of probation services. The new clause seems to have got the balance about right. However, it is helpful that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has tabled Amendment No. 7. It will enable the Minister to put on record further clarification on training and qualifications. It is important that those who bid to deliver services, particularly the third sector, are given as much guidance as possible to assist them in tendering successfully for contracts.

Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I shall ask a further question, having heard this short debate. I, too, am grateful for this amendment for clarification. One needs the utmost qualification for dealing with a range of offenders. The organisation with which I am closely involved has some of the most skilled workers in any organisation. It also works with a number of volunteers and other kinds of people. I want to be sure that we can take some risks, because risks have to be taken when people are in the community; otherwise, the risk is even greater, because no one keeps an eye on them. I want to be sure that we can work with volunteers, while ensuring that the supervision and oversight is left to those professionals who know how to do it. I would be worried if these measures simply implied that only those with the highest level qualification could have contact, because that in itself is dangerous.

The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I take this opportunity to seek clarification from the Government over their policy towards supportive supervision for probation and prison officers and the volunteers that my noble friend has just spoken of. I was most grateful for a recent letter from the Secretary of State assuring me that supervision of probation officers was being monitored. In my view, Her Majesty's Government should be as explicit as possible about regulations about such supervision. This is all the more important as we move towards a more differentiated workforce. The appropriate level of one-to-one supportive supervision must not be lost in the changes.
	As the Minister made clear on Report, such supervision is expensive so must be jealously guarded. I look to the Minister for further reassurances that supervision for probation officers and para-probation officers will be protected by him. I also encourage him to consider extending such supportive supervision to prison officers. It is welcome that he seeks to develop a common culture between prison and probation officers and that for the first time the two cadres are training together. Such communality will contribute to the mutual respect required for effective end-to-end management and reducing offending. The introduction of supportive supervision for prison officers would be a considerable boost to this common culture and to the status of prison officers. It would be worth the cost; in particular, it would increase the level of retention of staff in the private sector, some private prisons having a staff turnover of nearly 50 per cent per annum. It would promote humanity as reflection is necessary in treating the vulnerable, the young and the mentally ill with respect. It would demonstrate the respect in which the Minister holds prison officers as they work daily with the mentally ill or disordered, those with learning disabilities and those who pose a threat to themselves, to prison inmates, to officers or to the public.
	I hope that the Minister will undertake to take away and consider how supervision might be improved for probation officers and para-probation officers and perhaps introduced for prison officers. How is a culture of reflection being promoted in the probation and prison services?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. I am grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for what they have said about their proposal to extend Clause 11, which makes provision for publication and enforcement of a national framework for qualification for officers. The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, was right in saying that Clause 11 has got it about right, but I hope that what I say will add clarification on that so that I can give a little comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. The noble Baroness is right when she says that in this arena there are some very skilled and committed volunteers whose contribution we would not wish in any way to undermine or discourage, as it is so valuable in keeping safe the people whom we care about. By "the people we care about" I mean both victims and the offenders who wish to rehabilitate and restore their behaviour.
	Currently the clause makes it clear that the Secretary of State may publish guidelines about any qualifications, experience or training required to perform the work of an officer or a provider of probation services and must—and I emphasise must—publish guidelines for the work that involves the supervision of and direct contact with offenders. It also requires the Secretary of State, when carrying out his commissioning functions, to ensure that the guidelines apply to all providers whether from the public, private or voluntary sector.
	Amendment No. 7 links to the earlier amendment which the Government opposed on Report and continue to oppose. However, I shall deal here with the amendment's substantive effect—which is to ensure that commissioners do not exercise their power to enter into contracts unless they are satisfied that the other party has complied with these guidelines. I understand the point which the amendment is intended to address, and of course commissioners will need to be confident that a provider has enough appropriately trained staff before entering into a contract. However, that is not quite what the amendment says. It says that a commissioner shall not make arrangements with a provider unless the commissioner is satisfied that the provider has complied with the guidelines. As it is difficult to see how a new provider could demonstrate that he had complied, the amendment's unintended effect would be to restrict the ability of new providers to deliver probation services.
	Clause 11 as drafted already provides what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, would wish, and, in effect, it gives the necessary safeguards. It is already implicit in Clause 11(4) that, in commissioning services, the Secretary of State will need to be assured that the provider will be able to comply with the guidelines. I therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will see that the amendment is unnecessary and that the noble Lord will agree that it should be withdrawn.
	I very much hear what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, says about supervision, the need for protection and the way in which the two are now being conjoined between prison officers and the Probation Service. The fact that they are learning together, training together and developing a joint ethos is very important indeed. I shall take back the noble Earl's comments to my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and ensure that they hear what he said. It very much fits within the new culture that we are trying to inculcate into the service and might be something that people will want to look at in due course.

Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for providing precisely what the amendment sought—clarification. As I said in opening, we needed to tease this out. I am grateful also to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for mentioning risk and all the people involved. A whole raft of skills need to be harnessed particularly within these small voluntary organisations and those people should not be impeded or made to feel unwelcome in doing their work.
	I thank all those who spoke in this short debate. I think that we have achieved what I had hoped by putting these thoughts on the record for the commissioners to take into consideration when the time comes. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 25 [Conveyance of prohibited articles into or out of prison]:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendment No. 8:
	Clause 25, page 15, line 37, at end insert—
	"In paragraph (a) "specified" means specified in the authorisation."
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 26 [Other offences relating to prison security]:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendment No. 9:
	Clause 26, page 18, line 18, at end insert—
	"In paragraph (a) "specified" means specified in the authorisation."
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Schedule 1 [Probation trusts: further provisions]:

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: moved Amendment No. 10:
	Schedule 1, page 28, line 16, leave out paragraphs (c) and (d)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, this amendment has already been the subject of discussion among the Front Benches. I shall make one or two further comments on the Motion that the Bill do now pass but have nothing further to say at this point. I beg to move.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, we have had helpful discussions on the subject of magistrates with the senior presiding judge and the noble Baronesses, Lady Anelay and Lady Linklater. I am grateful to them all but particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, who tabled the amendment which has been spoken to so eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. The Government continue to believe that magistrates have an important role to play under the new arrangements and that they have a lot to offer trusts. However, it is more appropriate for them to be appointed in a personal capacity on the basis of their individual skills and experience rather than as a result of statutory prescription. I am therefore happy to support the amendment.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendment No. 11:
	Schedule 1, page 29, line 29, leave out "Subject to sub-paragraph (2),"

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, the amendments in this group are technical. This is a straightforward consequential amendment. As we have previously noted, a large number of such amendments need to be made to the many references to local probation boards across the statute book. Clause 41 enables this to be done by means of secondary legislation, which will be the most appropriate mechanism for making most of them.
	However, we have made a small number in the Bill to show the House how these matters are being approached—for example, in relation to the Race Relations Act and the Children Act. The amendment before us concerns the duties that the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 places on local probation boards in relation to youth justice and youth offending teams. It shows how those duties will apply under the new arrangements and takes a similar approach to the Children Act amendment that we considered earlier.
	The Government are determined to ensure that probation's commitments to a wide range of multi-agency partnerships are maintained under the new arrangements. I take this opportunity to thank all those who have worked so hard on this Bill during all its stages for their commitment, tenacity and consideration. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendment No. 12:
	Schedule 1, page 29, line 34, leave out sub-paragraphs (2) and (3)
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Schedule 3 [Minor and consequential amendments]:

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: moved Amendments Nos. 13 and 14:
	Schedule 3, page 36, line 31, at end insert—
	"Interpretation Act 1978 (c. 30)
	1A In Schedule 1 to the Interpretation Act 1978 (words and expressions defined) there is inserted, at the appropriate places—
	"Officer of a provider of probation services" in relation to England and Wales, has the meaning given by section 10(1) of the Offender Management Act 2007;"; and
	"Provider of probation services", in relation to England and Wales, has the meaning given by section 3(6) of the Offender Management Act 2007;".
	Schedule 3, page 36, line 31, at end insert—
	"Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (c. 37)
	(1) The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 is amended as follows.
	(2) In section 38(2) (provision of youth justice services), after paragraph (a) (but before the "and" following it) there is inserted—
	"(aa) the Secretary of State in relation to his functions under sections 2 and 3 of the Offender Management Act 2007;(ab) every provider of probation services that is required by arrangements under section 3(2) of the Offender Management Act 2007 to carry out the duty under this subsection in relation to the local authority;".
	(3) In section 39 (youth offending teams)—
	(a) in subsection (3), after paragraph (a) (but before the "and" following it) there is inserted—"(aa) the Secretary of State in relation to his functions under sections 2 and 3 of the Offender Management Act 2007;(ab) every provider of probation services that is required by arrangements under section 3(2) of the Offender Management Act 2007 to carry out the duty under this subsection in relation to the local authority;"; and(b) in subsection (5)(a), after "board" here is inserted "or an officer of a provider of probation services".
	(4) In section 41(10) (the Youth Justice Board) and 42(3) (supplementary provisions), after "probation board" there is inserted "a provider of probation services".
	On Question, amendments agreed to.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.
	Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Scotland of Asthal.)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, I moved Amendment No. 10 formally partly not to hold up the process. Therefore, I hope that I may be allowed to say a few words on this Motion. First, I apologise that noble Lords have had to hear the substitute from these Benches rather than the real expert—the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has been detained in Scotland on family business. This has been a very steep learning curve for me, which I have nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed. However, I watch the Bill leave this House with foreboding. It seems to me that it has several different rationales and several layers of the Labour Party's modernisation project for the public services, which remain unresolved.
	I very much thank the Minister for the way in which she dealt with the Bill, although I was not always entirely sure that she was in full sympathy with some of its aims. The noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Filkin, sometimes sounded a great deal more enthusiastic about some of its aspects than she did. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, suggested that the principles that applied to the National Health Service would apply to the Probation Service and offender management. I passed that remark on to staff at Doncaster prison—a private prison—and was greeted with complete and utter horror. They said that the last thing that they wanted was to have the same churning reorganisation. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, accused the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, of being anachronistic. As the Minister will know, I think that there is nothing so anachronistic as a management fashion that is now 10 years out of date.
	The Bill does not deal with some of the underlying problems that we face as a country in offender management, such as the non-enforcement of fines. The Carter report, which is where we started, referred to that problem in its analysis but did not deal with it in its conclusions. There is an immense problem with overcrowding in our prisons, which means that many of the things that are most important in terms of reducing the rate of reoffending simply cannot be done. The two prisons that I have been to over the past few months cannot fulfil their education and training programmes, while the resettlement problems are enormous. Overcrowding in prisons, as we all know, also means that people are being imprisoned further and further away from their home base and are transferred more often from one prison to another. The resettlement people at Doncaster prison told me that they now have to deal with resettlement issues connected to East Anglia and the Home Counties because so many prisoners in Yorkshire are now drawn from the south-east. There is a range of issues here with which I feel we have not fully dealt and the Bill does not fully deal.
	Perhaps I may touch on a particular issue on which we have not put down an amendment at Third Reading because we were discouraged from doing so by the Public Bill Office: the question of Clause 19, which covers the removal of the statutory duties of the controller and passes them on to a private prison. On Friday, I asked whether I could talk to people about this in particular, and I am grateful to the staff of Doncaster prison for arranging for me to see a controller. I also happened to meet a deputy controller from another prison and a former controller now working for the regional offender manager. They all said that they were not entirely sure why Clause 19 is in the Bill. They said that there is no demand for it, while the most experienced observed that it probably came from the understanding and expectation some years ago that statutory duties of adjudication did not take very much time and that the main job of the controller was to monitor the implementation of a private sector prison's contract. "But", they all went on to say, "we have now all discovered that statutory duties and adjudication take a great deal of time". If those duties are transferred to a private prison, additional staff will be needed to cope with that, with some adjustment to the contract to pay for those staff. There is no financial saving to be made.
	As I dig into the Bill, I have a number of questions for which the Government do not appear to have a clear and coherent underlying rationale. While we accept that this Bill will now pass and go back to another place, Members on these Benches are unhappy that, while we have managed to improve it in a number of areas, it was not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny; it would have been a perfect candidate for such scrutiny, as some of its contrasting rationales could have been ironed out at that stage. We have done our best, but I fear that it may not be enough.

Viscount Bridgeman: My Lords, I am afraid that these Benches are also fielding a B-team today. On behalf of my noble friend Lady Anelay, who is similarly delayed on family business, I thank all noble Lords who have been of great assistance in the progression of this Bill. I wish the Bill well on its progress through the House of Commons and I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for their invariable courtesy in dealing with the legislation. I also offer the noble and learned Baroness our best wishes in her new role.

Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I, too, thank the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Lord for the way in which they have conducted the Bill. It would be quite wrong not to say, too, that we have been enormously impressed by the way in which the noble and learned Baroness has handled the most immense legislative burden over the past few years. We wish her well in her new appointment. While we may not have agreed on everything on this and previous Bills, I am conscious that we have shared the same motivation; namely, that we have been all about the improvement of the management of offenders and the speedy introduction of deliverable change where it is appropriate.
	During our consideration of this Bill, we have covered an immense amount of ground but, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, a great deal has not been covered in the management of offenders. We mentioned some of the issues during the debate. I agree about the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny. I mention that in the context of the regulatory impact assessment, which I did not think had been carried.
	We send the Bill back to another place with two important amendments in respect of local commissioning and delaying implementation until further consideration has been given. In this connection, I hope that the attention of the other place will be drawn to the recently published annual report by the Chief Inspector of Probation, in which he says that a review of certain matters is under way in the Ministry of Justice and, in particular, that end-to-end supervision of offenders should be sensibly implemented because the Government's goal of co-ordinated, continuous management of offenders risks being undeliverable. It was in that context and the context of the further study of prisons by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, as well as against the background of frozen budgets in the prison and probation services and the rising numbers of people in prison, that I felt that consideration should be given to the impact of all the legislation in the field, not only this legislation.
	In connection with that, I am enormously encouraged by the response of the Ministry of Justice and, in particular, of the new Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, with whom I had a very encouraging meeting last week. We discussed disability and he has assured me that the Disability Discrimination Act applies to both staff and prisoners. He has written to me accordingly and he has undertaken to include the Department of Health in discussions on diversity, because it has responsibility for the primary care trusts, which are responsible for its provision.
	We have covered an enormous amount of ground in the Bill and I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for the way in which she has taken it through. I hope that the other place will take into consideration not only what has been said but what has been going on around the Bill. That all needs to be taken into consideration in the proper management of offenders, which is something that affects us all.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. I hate to end on a sour note, but I do not accept for one moment that either of them could ever be a member of anyone's B-team. Both are fully paid-up members of the A-team and have made a sterling contribution to the Bill.
	I thank noble Lords for the kindness that they have shown me. I regret, of course, that I shall have less opportunity to discuss matters from the Dispatch Box, but that may be a great relief to the House. I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord Bassam for his sterling efforts, not only on this Bill but on each and every Bill in which I have been involved over the past four years.
	The Bill has a joint purpose: to improve the supervision of offenders and better to protect victims. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that what all have done in this House has been to that end. As the Bill moves back to the other place, we wish it God's speed.
	On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House in Committee accordingly.
	[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
	Clause 89 [Constitution of new parish]:
	[Amendments Nos. 204CC to 204CE not moved.]

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204CF:
	Clause 89, page 59, line 12, leave out subsection (7)

Lord Greaves: We start again. Amendment No. 204CF refers to the part of the Bill that is about parish reviews, the constitution of new parishes, existing parishes under review, and so on. The first amendments in the group are fairly minor, but they nevertheless will be of interest to people involved in their local parishes.
	Amendment No. 204CF challenges the suggestion in Clause 89 that a review must make recommendations in relation to new styles. Members of the Committee will remember from our debates last week that the new styles will make it possible for a parish council to be called a community council, neighbourhood council or village council instead of a parish council. It is not clear to me why a review that is about the existence of parishes, the areas that they cover, the grouping of parishes and the possible abolition of parishes should make recommendations about the styles. Surely, that should be left to the individual parishes once they are set up to make their own decisions. If we believe in devolution, that is the kind of decision that should rest at parish level; and for all existing parishes it will be taken at parish level. It is not at all clear why a new style should be imposed on a parish by the district council as part of a review.
	Amendment No. 204CG is about a parish name change, and Amendment No. 204CH is about whether there should be a parish council. Again, it is not clear why those have to be the subject of recommendations in the parish review, but they clearly may be, and they may be an important part of the parish review. If there are no proposals for new councils as part of that review, and it is simply a matter of boundaries, and if there are no proposals for a parish name change, it is not clear why the review should waste everyone's time in considering it and possibly stirring up arguments where otherwise they would not exist.
	Amendments Nos. 204CQ and 204CR are slightly more substantive. They are about the criteria that a parish review must take into consideration in deciding whether the parish should be divided into wards—in other words, have more than one electoral area—or whether it should be elected as a whole, as many smaller parishes are. At page 62 of the Bill, a number of criteria are set out that must be considered. They relate, for instance, to the number and distribution of local government electors for the parish; whether community links make it desirable that that part of the parish should be separately represented; the size and boundaries of the wards and the number of councillors to be elected; the number of local government electors and likely changes to that; and easily identifiable boundaries and local ties.
	In Amendment No. 204CQ, I propose that in each case an additional criterion should be whether the parish is divided into wards for elections to a principal council. In most cases, that would be the district council. Some parishes might be big enough to have two or three district council wards, or perhaps even more, and it is an important criterion in deciding whether the parish should be divided. In the interest of convenience and people understanding the local electoral system, it is sensible that parish wards should, where possible, be based on district council wards. It may be that in some cases the district council ward is big and may form two parish wards. However, that does not alter the principle that it would not be sensible for a parish divided into district council wards to ignore those divisions and to have different wards or to elect at large. That important consideration should be included in the Bill.
	Amendment No. 204CS relates to the circumstances in which a district council can ignore the review. I am not sure that this is the right place for this amendment and I probably should have taken out some earlier words. Its purpose is simply to probe the circumstances in which a district council, having conducted a parish review, can ignore it. The implication would be that if a parish review was taking place, the district was going to carry it out. Would the district simply be able to ignore it or make changes in any way that it wanted? Would the district have to give reasons and what would those reasons be?
	Amendment No. 204CV, the last in the group, is to probe the statement of intent on how restrictive the Electoral Commission advice on parish reviews, ward boundaries and the number of parish councillors should be. Is it intended that this will be done on some sort of sliding scale, whereby if there were a population of so and so, there would be so many councillors, and so on? Or will there be reasonable flexibility and scope for local choice? For example, a parish with 5,000 electors might want considerably more councillors if it consisted of a number of villages in a far-flung rural area—or even a far-flung rural area without villages—than if it was a compact town. Will there be adequate scope for local choice? How restricted is it intended that the Electoral Commission advice should be? I beg to move

Baroness Crawley: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for the manner in which he has spoken to these amendments and I hope that I can allay his concern that we have moved away from the concept of devolution in this part of the Bill, which we most certainly have not.
	This group of amendments deals with a number of points related to community governance reviews. I shall deal with each amendment individually. First, on Amendment No. 204CF, when a principal council makes a reorganisation order under Clause 88, it may also provide for any new parish to have an alternative style. The amendment would prevent principal councils making this recommendation, and the noble Lord set out reasons why he felt it necessary to table the amendment. A community governance review that recommends the creation of a new parish needs to make an initial recommendation as to the style of that parish. This is simply because, until the parish is actually created, there is no parish council or parish meeting to make that decision. That recommendation is very much a technical step in the process of creating the parish and does not take away the autonomy of the parish in deciding its style.
	At all other times, after a new parish is created, it will be for the parish council or the parish meeting to decide if they wish to adopt a different style. Therefore, once the parish council or parish meeting is created, it will be able to decide to adopt a different style immediately, if it so desires. I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied with that explanation and that he will feel able to withdraw Amendment No. 204CF.
	We believe that Amendments Nos. 204CG and 204CH are simply not required. In relation to Amendment No. 204CG, the Bill currently states that the council must make a recommendation,
	"as to whether or not the name of the parish should be changed".
	Amendment No. 204CH relates to the same drafting of the question as to whether an existing parish is to have a parish council. The amendment seeks to change that so that the council "may" make such a recommendation but is not required to do so. We do not believe that these amendments add anything to the Bill. If the council decides that no change to the parish name is required, it will simply make such a recommendation under the Bill. Equally, if the council decides that a parish with a council should retain that council, it will make that recommendation under the Bill. Surely it is preferable that those interested in the review are aware that a decision has been reached on any relevant issue so that they can, for example, retain the existing name rather than not address the issue in the review or the recommendations, as the amendment would allow.
	Amendment No. 204CS is a probing amendment, which, again, we do not believe is required. I shall set out how Clause 98 details the steps that a principal council must take to publicise the outcome of any review of community governance that it has conducted. Subsections (1), (2) and (3) require the principal council to notify those who may have an interest or who have already shown an interest in the review or the outcome of the review. The council must also inform such interested parties of how, if at all, it intends to implement its decisions on the review. If the council makes an order implementing the results of its review, it will be required to take other steps. Subsection (4) simply makes it clear that these steps are not required when an order is not made: you do not need to publicise implementation if you are not making a decision to implement. Indeed, it will be impossible for the steps to be followed as they will all be dependent on an order being deposited, being made available for inspection and being sent to other bodies.
	In relation to Amendment No. 204CV, it is important that guidance is issued to assist local authorities when conducting community governance reviews. Some authorities do not have recent experience of conducting these reviews. Issuing guidance will ensure that there will be some basic framework within which local authorities can carry out reviews for their area, and a combination of the legislation and guidance will provide that framework.
	Obviously, it is more appropriate for the Electoral Commission than the Secretary of State to issue guidance on electoral arrangements. However, it is currently our intention that this guidance will be combined with guidance issued by the Secretary of State on non-electoral matters. I hope that that meets the noble Lord's concerns about the extent of the Electoral Commission's role.
	Finally, Amendments Nos. 204CQ and 204CR would require principal councils to consider their electoral areas, district wards and county divisions when deciding whether the parish should be divided into wards. If the amendments were accepted and a principal council decided to divide a parish into wards, it would have to have regard to the boundaries of the electoral areas when setting parish ward boundaries. We believe that it is questionable whether the amendment is needed, as we would expect local authorities to have regard to district, ward and county division boundaries. However, we will happily take that away for further consideration. We will look again at Amendments Nos. 204CQ and 204CR and seek the views of the Electoral Commission on them. Therefore, in view of that undertaking, we request that the noble Lord withdraws this group of amendments.

Lord Greaves: I am very grateful for a great deal of what the Minister has said, some of which is very useful clarification. I am grateful for her willingness to look again at Amendments Nos. 204CQ and 204CR, which are about the importance of having regard to the existing electoral boundaries. One can always say that people will do something because it is common sense or because one would expect them to do it, and although various criteria are set out in the Bill, the existing district electoral boundaries seem to me to be of at least equal importance to those in the Bill. That is the argument for putting them in. If they are not in the Bill and there is a debate about which should prevail—as there often is with electoral boundaries—they might be thought to be less important. I am grateful for that and I hope that the Electoral Commission might give some sensible advice.
	On the parish review, it is fairly clear that if the district council sets up such a review, or if one is set up in response to a parish petition, which is the circumstance in which there is more likely to be a conflict, then having carried it out, the district council could simply vote to ignore it and do nothing. Perhaps that matter should be resolved electorally and politically at a local level. However, as long as we are clear that that is possible and that in some circumstances it will probably happen—most things that are possible eventually happen somewhere or other at some time—it will cause problems. I do not suggest that the Secretary of State should, at this stage, gallop in and resolve the matter because it is probably one for local determination. I am grateful to the Minister and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 89 agreed to.
	Clause 90 [Existing parishes under review]:
	[Amendments Nos. 204CG and 204CH not moved.]
	Clause 90 agreed to.
	Clauses 91 to 94 agreed to.
	Clause 95 [Duties when undertaking a review]:

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204CJ:
	Clause 95, page 61, line 15, leave out subsection (5)

Lord Greaves: This amendment probes an important matter on parish reviews, which is the provision in Clause 95(5):
	"In deciding what recommendations to make",
	in the parish review,
	"the principal council must take into account any other arrangements (apart from those relating to parishes and their institutions)—
	(a) that have already been made, or
	(b) that could be made,
	for the purposes of community representation or community engagement in respect of the area under review".
	This was discussed to some extent when we were talking about London. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, suggested that London did not want parishes and did not need them. An argument put forward was that there are lots of other neighbourhood, community and even, occasionally, village organisations which do that job perfectly well.
	This is an interesting matter, and I ask the Government what it will mean in practice. I refer to the helpful document that the Minister sent round to us all, the statement of intent on statutory guidance. It suggests that,
	"it may be helpful for the guidance to provide some advice on this issue in relation to community governance reviews, particularly where other arrangements already exist (eg; local residents' associations, community or neighbourhood forums, area committees), or where these bodies could be considered as viable alternatives to parish council/meeting. Such bodies are outside the scope of the Bill provisions but nevertheless could be taken into consideration by principal councils in undertaking community governance reviews".
	I have no objection to that as an overall strategy on parishes. One problem of everything that gets done nowadays is that, in some areas at least, people suffer from consultation and participation overload. As a result, it is not done as effectively as it should be. I could provide some examples, which I will not, from my own backyard. Year after year, people are asked by different people in different organisations about the same things and give the same answers when they actually want some solutions and answers to those things, not more surveys. This is also true if there is a proliferation of organisations trying to compete with each other for participation in the community. It is a sensible thing to be looked at.
	I am really asking how top-heavy the statutory guidance will be. Again, it seems that once you have looked at what is on the ground and whether you want new parish councils or not—or whether you ought to abolish them—it ought to be up to people in the area to work out their own arrangements. It does not seem to be in any way suitable for detailed rules and regulations. That will just cause problems. The barrack-room lawyers in the community, and perhaps on the council, will have a field day analysing the statutory guidance and saying yes and all the rest of it. We want an absolutely light touch here—perhaps just a statement of intent that this must be looked at and considered, but certainly no detailed rules, regulations and statutory guidance. I look forward to the Minister's response to those genuine concerns and beg to move.

Baroness Hamwee: My noble friend has raised an extremely important point. What he did not refer to, but which I would like to add in to the mix of questions, is what is meant by community representation and engagement. Some people might say that the whole of London is a community. Others might say that a community is those within walking distance of a particular supermarket. Others might say, "You support Chelsea, I support West Ham: we are in different communities". There are many types of community. The guidance ought to make it quite clear that what local people think of as their variety of communities, not just one community, is for local consideration. Certainly, guidance should not attempt to define the term in the way drawn attention to by my noble friend.

Baroness Crawley: Again, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. As the Committee will know, we are developing the guidance with a group of stakeholders. They will be taking great notice of this afternoon's discussion in Committee. As both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness have said, we want this to be as flexible, light and user-friendly as possible, ensuring that we still have the practical outcomes we are looking for. The guidance is being developed and note will be taken of this discussion.
	We think it is highly desirable that principal councils should consider the wider picture of community governance in undertaking their reviews. Clause 95(5) makes such considerations a requirement, and Amendment No. 204CJ removes that requirement. If the amendment were to be agreed—I understand that it is probing—it would be to the detriment of the overall schemes that we are now considering for establishing community governance. We wish people everywhere, including in London, to have the chance to argue in favour of parish councils. If those arguments carry the day during a community governance review, they should get the results they desire. However, in some areas, particularly urban areas, there may be good reasons why establishing a parish could be unwise. If in good faith a local authority concludes that it cannot sensibly define areas in which elected parish councils, with all their attendant powers and duties, would reflect the identities and interests of the community and provide effective and convenient community governance, as required in Clause 95(4), it should not create parishes there, and indeed we would not want it to.
	On the other hand, we wish to make sure that communities are as cohesive and engaged as possible and that people have as much influence over what happens in their neighbourhood as possible. Many local authorities have introduced innovative mechanisms to achieve that. For example, there are area forums in many places, and many communities have their own initiatives and have established powerful and effective organisations that make a huge contribution to the promotion of well-being in their area. It seems to us that it would be natural and sensible for authorities, when conducting a community governance review, to have overt regard to the arrangements that are already in place, many of which are very good. Indeed, we think they should be required to do so. We see nothing to be gained by the removal of subsection (5) and much to be lost in terms of achieving the best outcomes. Therefore, I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.

Lord Greaves: I am again grateful, though a little more tentatively than I was on the previous amendment. A lot of issues here seem unresolved. Indeed, the Minister said that people are looking at the guidance at the moment. Can she tell us when it might be ready and whether the guidance relating to parish councils generally or this specifically might be ready, in a draft form at least, before we come back from our summer holidays and renew discussions on Report? It might save the House a lot of time if we could see the guidance first because our concerns might be allayed. Indeed, we might think that things are being done exactly right.
	I have one further concern. There may well be organisations or structures within the community that are working well and involve quite a lot of people in a very constructive way. However, even if that is the case, there may well be circumstances where it is worth while taking the further step of going to an elected parish council that is qualitatively different from almost all the other organisations in the community, because it is a democratically elected body that has the status of a local authority and all the rights set out in the statutes. In Pendle, where I live, the experience is that in 1974 five urban districts lost their councils. After a few years, non-statutory neighbourhood councils were set up in each of the five districts. Fairly quickly, they all came to the view, and there was a general view locally, that they wanted to become statutory parish councils, which they have now been for some years. That evolutionary process was part and parcel of the discussions that took place. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can answer my specific question.

Baroness Crawley: I would be happy to. We expect the guidance to be ready by the autumn, so we hope that we are talking about only a number of months. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord's last point, that the statutory route could well be the route that will be taken despite there being healthy non-statutory activity in that area. That will be very much taken into account when looking at the overall picture of what would work even better than the non-statutory arrangements already in place.

Lord Greaves: We are coming back in October. I regard October as being in the autumn. Any later than October is winter, certainly where I live. I am mindful of what people have written about autumn and gathering swallows, twittering in the skies and so on. Perhaps people could twitter as quickly as possible and gather their thoughts together. If we can have the guidance before Report on a lot of things in the Bill, it will help the Government a great deal when we get to that stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
	Clause 95 agreed to.
	Clause 96 [Recommendations to create parish councils]:

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204CK:
	Clause 96, page 61, line 35, leave out subsection (3)

Lord Greaves: This is a more important and substantive matter. It relates to the interaction of the direct democracy part of parishes, which is the only part of local government where these recommendations exist in a statutory form, and the other processes set out in the Bill.
	I am grateful to the Minister for telling me in reply to a Question for Written Answer that there are about 10,000 parishes and that approximately 8,900 have councils and 1,100 have only meetings. That was about the only detail she could give in reply to a fairly detailed Question on the number of parish meetings, the size of parish councils and so on. Interestingly, this information is not kept at central level for this parish level of government. Perhaps that is understandable as people forget about parishes.
	I remind your Lordships that parish councils were set up during a brief spell of Liberal Government in the middle of the 1890s. They were extremely controversial. I have no doubt that a lot more people attended the discussions that took place in this House then, and that there were some very angry people who thought that having democratically elected parish councils would bring forward all sorts of anarchism, socialist revolution in the countryside and so on. I do not think that has happened with parish councils, but they are, nevertheless, very valuable.
	The Local Government Act 1972 sets out that there will be a parish council if there are more than 200 electors. If there are between 150 and 200, there may be a parish council. If there are fewer than 150, there may be a parish council if the parish meeting resolves that it wants one. Obviously we are talking about small rural communities, which nevertheless may be very active and vibrant.
	We should remember that there are parish meetings everywhere. Every parish in the country has an annual parish meeting which all electors may attend, even where there is a parish council. That meeting can call a parish poll, which is a referendum in the parish involving local government electors. This inbuilt right to a parish poll is unique in our local government system. Parish meetings and parish polls therefore already exist as part of the system. There are not many parish polls, but people know about them and they are often very significant. The Bill is more flexible on parish councils in that there does not have to be a parish council in a newly created parish. Existing parishes will simply continue as they are, but a newly created or reorganised parish does not have to have a parish council unless there are more than 1,000 electors, and it will not have one if there are fewer than 150. Although the Bill is more flexible in not allowing a parish council, it is considerably less flexible in allowing small parishes to have a parish council. That is one issue behind this group of amendments.
	I am trying through the amendments to restore the flexibility which the Government are removing, as well as to explore the relationships between parish meetings and parish polls and the system of creating, changing and abolishing parishes and putting to parish meetings and parish polls the decision—if that is what people want locally—to create a new parish if the area is very small or to abolish a parish.
	Amendment No. 204CK would leave out the provision that the review must recommend that the proposed new parish should not have a council if it has 150 electors or fewer. The amendment would mean that such a recommendation could go to the electors in the parish itself. Amendment No. 204CM would mean that if the number proposed was under 150, the council would need the resolution of a parish meeting and confirmation in a parish poll if there were to be a parish council. That does not automatically mean that there would be a parish council; it means that a parish council could be created in very small parishes that might cover quite a large rural area and that might have a vibrant community, but only if a parish meeting says that it wants one and a parish poll votes in favour.
	Amendment No. 204CN is about the abolition of parish councils, and would provide that a parish meeting would have to pass a resolution or may hold a poll in order to abolish a parish council. If it held a poll, the decision of that poll would prevail. This is fundamental and only fair. None of this would happen, however, if there was a general view that an existing parish council should be abolished. If, however, there were a dispute and a proposal to abolish the parish council, surely the existing institutions of the parish meeting and the existing institutions of the parish poll should be brought into play. That is a very important provision, because the abolition of a local authority, even if it is only a parish, is not a minor matter.
	Amendment No. 204CP would apply the same provisions to changes in groups of parishes, although I do not press for this quite as strongly as I do in relation to abolition. The first half of the amendment would apply the same provisions to a parish meeting and a parish poll coming into play, if that is what people want, in an ungrouped parish where it is proposed to group parishes. The second half—proposed new subsections (5) to (8) of my amendment—would apply to changes in grouping arrangements that could be subject to the same procedure across the group.
	The grouping issue is less important or vital here. Surely, the creation of parish councils, whether new small parishes can have one and the abolition of them are matters that should involve the existing statutory institutions of the parish meeting of everyone in the parish. In a small parish, a huge proportion of the people might turn up. A parish meeting vote, a parish poll, is an established and acceptable means of making decisions in rural areas. I beg to move.

Lord Hanningfield: If we are talking about devolution, we certainly support the idea put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that there should not be a minimum number of 150. If a small parish wants a parish council, it should be allowed to have one. I doubt whether Dibley has 150 people and, therefore, we would not have the television series, "The Vicar of Dibley", which probably has done more to popularise parish councils than anything else. I hope that the Government will think again on that matter and will remove the minimum requirement of 150 because it is totally unnecessary.

Baroness Crawley: We may not have a meeting of minds on this. We understand the strength of the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. However, we come at it from a slightly different view. In order to institute a new concept of devolution, there has to be certainty within that, which is why we would want the principal council to have that final certainty. Perhaps at the end of my remarks, I might have persuaded Members of the Committee of my view.
	The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has tabled Amendments Nos. 204CK, 204CL and 204CM relating to when parish councils with low populations can or cannot be created. The noble Lord has also tabled Amendments Nos. 204CN and 204CP, which insert new clauses after Clause 96. On the creation of parish councils in areas with low populations, Clause 96(3) provides that a review must recommend that parishes with 150 or fewer local government electors should not have a parish council. The effects of these amendments would be to allow small parishes with electorates of 150 or fewer to have a parish council if the parish meeting of the parish resolved to have one, which was confirmed by a parish poll, as the noble Lord has explained.
	Amendment No. 204CK would remove Clause 96(3), which prevents the review from recommending that parishes with 150 electors or fewer have a parish council. We have included this provision in this clause to address what we see as the difficulty which sometimes exists in small parishes; in particular, getting sufficient numbers of people to stand for election to the parish council. I should make it clear, however, that this provision would not prevent a group of 150 or fewer electors presenting a community governance petition to a principal council recommending the constitution of a new parish for its area, which would allow for the creation of a parish meeting rather than council.
	Where a new parish is created with an electorate of 150 or fewer, the review must recommend that the parish should not have a council. However, I can reassure Members of the Committee—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is completely aware of this anyway—that this provision does not apply to an existing parish of the same size, which already has a parish council. Any existing parish that falls within that category can continue to have a parish council. The Bill does not alter the position under Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1972, whereby the parish meeting of a parish may apply to the principal council for its parish to be grouped with two or more neighbouring parishes under a common parish council.
	In summary, we do not believe that Amendments Nos. 204CK, 204CL and 204CM are required. We consider that while the Bill's provisions do not affect existing parish councils with low populations, they will help in the future to resolve problems that exist with some small parish councils being unable to find sufficient members. We are also resisting Amendments Nos. 204CN and 204CP, which insert new clauses after Clause 96. Our proposals in the Bill are about devolving power from central to local government and communities.
	Clause 95 sets out duties for principal councils to undertake community governance reviews. The key elements of that provision and of Clause 98 require principal councils to consult, to take account of representations and to make known the outcomes of their decisions for putting in place any community governance arrangements. The necessary processes and mechanisms set out in Part 4 of the Bill on parishes cover sufficiently the sort of situations for which the noble Lord is trying to provide, whether on proposals for abolition or on proposals for the grouping of parishes.
	Just as for any proposal to make changes to create or alter the boundaries of an existing parish, under the Government's proposals, where a principal authority might wish to consider the abolition of a parish council or the grouping of several parishes, it would still need to meet its statutory obligations. Principal councils would need to consider local opinion, including that of parish councillors and local electors. Any decision taken by the principal council could be legally challenged, and a court would have to be convinced that the decision was justified.
	The noble Lord's amendments would extend the involvement of local electors through parish meetings, giving them a say in determining the outcome of any review through a motion on recommendation made or a poll. In either case the Bill provides for not only local electors to be consulted on any review but anyone else as well, including the local authority, who appears to have an interest in it. Such stakeholders would, of course, include existing parish councils. While the noble Lord's amendments may be well intentioned, they are unnecessary and would effectively remove the new devolved power from principal council to the parish level—or at least make that less certain.
	As I have tried to explain, it is quite appropriate that local electors and stakeholders should be consulted properly about community governance arrangements and that their views be fully taken into account. Ultimately, it is for the principal council to take decisions on these matters and implement them. We do not wish to devolve to principal councils on the one hand while saying on the other hand that the decisions they make cannot be implemented without the support of parish meetings. We need certainty in the devolution process.
	We are also keen to encourage contested elections and believe that parish councils in an area with fewer than 150 electors would face difficulties in having contested elections for the minimum of five parish council seats. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I sit here baffled—interested, but baffled—at the minutiae that are covered by the term "local government". The Committee knows well that my experience of local government does not go as deeply as the noble Lord's into the democracy that we are seeking to cover.
	I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is trying to cover every conceivable alternative. It cannot be done, especially when we bear in mind the views and experience of the Electoral Commission. He is trying also to cover in the Bill situations where movement can take place at a reasonable depth in a democracy. I respect the experience brought to this House by the noble Lord and others. I only hope that what the Minister said will encourage him to accept that it is impossible to cover every person in every situation at every convenience.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, whom I greatly respect, speaks from his knowledge not only of a large body such as Essex County Council but also of the many smaller groupings within it. The Minister mentioned more than once community interests and intentions, which is what the Bill is about. If every "t" is crossed and every "i" dotted to take care of every conceivable situation, some of which will be contradictory, I fear that we will make people either bored or resentful of the fact that they are being driven and bound by central government. "A balance has to be struck" is a hackneyed phrase, but the Government have achieved it here. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will understand that and give way on his amendment.

Lord Greaves: I had thought that it was the Government who were trying to impose what they call certainty and that it was some of us who were trying to maintain existing flexibilities, which are being taken away, and to put decisions on parish governance where they belong—at parish level.
	The Minister said that devolution has to have certainty, which sums up a huge amount of what is wrong with the Bill, and not just with this part of it. If you have devolution, you lose certainty.

Baroness Crawley: I was talking about certainty in the process towards devolution. One is of course taking risks with devolution—that is part of the excitement of why we are here this afternoon.

Lord Greaves: I am glad that the Minister is as excited as I am. Some fundamental principles are at stake here. At the moment, an electorate of more than 200 people has a parish council. In future, an electorate of between 150 and 1,000 people may or may not get a parish council, according to the whim of the district council or the outcome of the process of a parish review that has to take place. That is not greater certainty, but less. I do not know how many of the 10,000 parishes in this country have fewer than 1,000 electors. My guess is that it is about two-thirds of them; it might be more. A very large number of parishes have fewer than 1,000 electors. In future, there will be no guarantee that they can have a parish council. It can be taken away if there is a parish review. Existing parishes will continue as they are until they have a parish review. If there are changes and new parishes are set up as part of a review, the parish councillors can be taken away. Equally, parishes can be abolished under a parish review.
	There is nothing revolutionary about this. There are existing institutions in parishes in England that consist of a parish meeting—usually an annual one, but clearly there could be a special parish meeting to discuss this. There is also the provision for a parish poll. Surely matters such as abolishing a parish in a controversial situation, or saying that a parish will exist and will have 650 electors as the village is quite sizeable but that it will not have a parish council, are matters in which existing institutions of the parish meeting and possibly the parish poll should be brought in. Those institutions exist already.
	This could lead in some cases, in a few places, to people being engaged in plotting, to use the word of the noble Lord, Lord Graham. I know of some districts in which there have been only one or two parishes, which have been at loggerheads with the district. The view of the district was that if only it could get rid of the parishes, it would be like other districts—and that would be fine. I fear that in a few places that sort of attitude might prevail. There should be a safeguard—not a safeguard that involves the Government coming from above and saying that that cannot be done, but a democratic safeguard involving people using the existing institutions of parish meetings and polls to say what they think. They might agree with abolition or they might not.
	I think that the Government are wrong on this and I hope that they will seriously think again, because I am not proposing a radical change. It is just a sensible one. This is something that we might have to come back to. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 204CL and 204CM not moved.]
	Clause 96 agreed to.
	[Amendments Nos. 204CN and 204CP not moved.]
	Clause 97 [Electoral recommendations: general considerations]:
	[Amendments Nos. 204CQ and 204CR not moved.]
	Clause 97 agreed to.
	Clause 98 [Publicising outcome]:
	[Amendment No. 204CS not moved.]
	Clause 98 agreed to.
	Clause 99 agreed to.
	Clause 100 [Orders and regulations under this Chapter]:

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204CT:
	Clause 100, page 64, line 16, leave out "or 90"

Lord Greaves: Clause 101 is headed "Agreements about incidental matters", which sounds fairly incidental. It says that any public bodies involved in a parish review or reorganisation may make agreements; those agreements are set out in Clause 101. They can be about property, income, rights, liabilities, expenses, financial relations, transfer or retention of property rights and liabilities, the making of payments in connection with that and so on. Do the terms and conditions under which this can take place have to be on a commercial basis, on the basis of valuations agreed by the district auditor, or can it be on the basis of free transfer or anything in between? If new parishes are being set up, as part of the local agreement for what those parishes are going to do it might be sensible to transfer some functions to them. Some statutory functions—I think that allotments are the classic example—have to be transferred and will automatically become a parish responsibility but there are other examples, such as running a local recreation ground or even a local park. In a small market town, there may even be a small town hall surplus to the district council's requirements which it might be sensible to transfer to the new parish or town council. My question is whether they can make their own financial arrangements, or will the auditor complain if property is handed over free? If that cannot happen, it will fly in the face of what the Government have been talking about in regard to local groups and neighbourhood groups.

Baroness Hamwee: Is my noble friend speaking to Clause 101 stand part?

Lord Greaves: I am indeed. Am I speaking to the wrong thing?

Lord Graham of Edmonton: Keep going.

Lord Greaves: I beg the Committee's pardon. I will keep going and the Minister can reply when we reach the right place. It took my noble friend to notice it, though I saw the Minister looking—

Baroness Crawley: It makes two of us; the noble Lord was on the same page as I was.

Lord Greaves: I had almost come to the end of that anyhow. Perhaps I can bank it and when we get to Clause 101 stand part I shall listen with interest to what the Minister has to say.
	I am supposed to be speaking to Amendment No. 204CT. The purpose of the amendment is to leave out the reference to Section 90 of the Local Government Act 1972. I see the Minister nodding, so I must be on the right one this time. Amendment No. 204CU, which is grouped with it, refers to the rules—presumably, in this context, the parish council election rules—set under the same Act.
	I do not understand why the local election rules, whatever they are called—the town and parish council rules—should be subject to change. Perhaps the Minister can explain this to me. It seems to me that elections are elections and the same rules should apply even if it is a special election to set up a new parish council, which is probably what these clauses refer to.
	I turn to Amendment No. 204CT. It is suggested that for casual vacancies the period of office for the chair of the parish council or a parish meeting and for parish councillors can be changed. I do not understand why this provision is necessary. The 1972 Act says that they will serve the outstanding period of the person whom they replaced, which is the normal circumstance. Why might it be different in these circumstances? I beg to move.

Baroness Crawley: I am rather glad that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has finished commenting on the clause stand part debate because as my words mirrored his almost exactly we would not have taken each other any further on that. However, we shall come back with answers to his questions.
	Amendments Nos. 204CT and 204CU would prevent a reorganisation order made by a principal council, or regulations made by the Secretary of State to supplement that order, from excluding or modifying provisions made under Section 90 of the Local Government Act 1972 and Section 36 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. I shall set out why we resist the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.
	A reorganisation order provides for community governance arrangements to be put in place in a principal council's area, or for changes to be made to those arrangements. Section 90 of the Local Government Act 1972 provides for a person who is elected or co-opted as a councillor to fill a casual vacancy to hold office until the date on which the person to whose place they were elected or appointed would have retired. In relation to an existing council where elections are to be held in a year other than a normal parish council year, Clause 100 could be used to cut short or prolong the term of office of a councillor who is filling a casual vacancy. Parliamentary and local government elections must be held in accordance with rules made under Section 36 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. In relation to parish councils, the local elections rules 1983 deal with matters such as casual vacancies. They specify when a by-election is required to be held, how soon after a vacancy has arisen an election must be held and so on. They also deal with matters such as the giving of notice of an election, the nomination of candidates and contested elections.
	These provisions therefore ensure that local authorities and the Secretary of State have the full range of powers available to them to enable reorganisation orders effectively to implement new community governance arrangements. This ensures that as smooth a transition as possible may be made following the reorganisation of community governance in an area. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendments to Clause 100.

Lord Greaves: This is an occasion on which I must read what the Minister says in Hansard. I did not understand what she said, but that may well be my fault. If I still do not understand it, I shall write to her and perhaps she can explain it in writing. I do not understand why this provision is required to secure the smooth transition that she talked about. It may be absolutely obvious but I do not understand it. For the moment I—

Baroness Crawley: I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I have a note from officials in the Box which says that the reorganisation order, where it puts in place electoral arrangements, might require changes to dates of elections and terms of office of councillors, so needs to disapply provisions of the 1972 Act. I do not know whether that makes it clearer or less clear.

Lord Greaves: I think that explains the bit of the Bill which I was not seeking to delete because it seemed to me necessary. It is the casual vacancies bit that I do not understand. However, I may enjoy future discussions on the amendment with the Minister. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 204CU not moved.]
	Clause 100 agreed to.
	Clause 101 [Agreements about incidental matters]:
	On Question, Whether Clause 101 shall stand part of the Bill?

Lord Greaves: I spoke to this in another grouping a few minutes ago, and I look forward to the Minister's reply.

Baroness Crawley: Clause 101 mirrors equivalent provisions in the Local Government and Rating Act 1997. It provides for any local authority or other public body as defined in Clause 16 affected by a reorganisation order following a community governance review to make agreements about incidental matters. Clause 101(1)(a) states what may in particular be provided for in an agreement,
	"any property, income, rights, liabilities and expenses (so far as affected by the order) ... any financial relations between the parties to the agreement".
	The clause also provides for a matter in dispute to be referred either to an arbiter agreed by both parties or to the Secretary of State. This clause ensures as smooth a transition as possible following a reorganisation of community governance in the area, and I commend it to the Committee.

Baroness Hamwee: When I read this clause, I wrote against it, "belt and braces", but it is more than that. It is perfectly reasonable to provide mechanisms for the things one does not want to spell out in a Bill, and to my mind most legislation has far too much spelt out in it. But this clause goes further. Having said that parties can make an agreement, which is reasonable enough, it states that if they cannot come to an agreement, there will be arbitration. That takes matters rather a long way, and there is an issue over whether, not having said what those matters are to be, the clause then provides that if the parties cannot agree, they will have whatever is imposed on them because there will be an arbitration mechanism.

Lord Greaves: I am grateful for that intervention by my noble friend, who occasionally shows why she is a lawyer. However, she may well be making an extremely important point.
	The Minister has not answered my basic point, which in a nutshell is this: if a district is involved in a parish review or in setting up a new town, village, neighbourhood or community council, can it effectively endow the new parish-level council with some of its own assets and hand over the running of those assets to the parish council? That is the question behind what I am asking.

Baroness Crawley: I do not think that we are going to be any more enlightened this afternoon on these points, therefore I wonder if I may write to the noble Lord and give him a more definitive answer. We just keep coming back to the same wording.

Lord Greaves: I am grateful to the Minister and I look forward to seeing her reply when I get back from holiday.

Clause 101 agreed to.
	Clause 102 [Guidance]:
	[Amendment No. 204CV not moved.]
	Clause 102 agreed to.
	Clause 103 agreed to.
	Clause 104 [Interpretation]:
	[Amendment No. 204D not moved.]

Lord Hanningfield: moved Amendment No. 204DA:
	Clause 104, page 66, line 8, leave out from "England" to "or" in line 9

Lord Hanningfield: We are concerned that the Bill fails to consider the complexities of three-tier authorities with regard to community governance reviews. The Bill states that unitary authorities and district councils are considered to be principal authorities with powers to undertake community governance reviews that can create and, as we have heard today, abolish parish councils. It is particularly worrying that these so-called principal authorities can initiate community governance reviews, while counties will be merely informed but not actually involved in the process of creating and extending parishes. The amendment seeks to ensure that county councils are also considered principal authorities with exactly the same rights to carry out these reviews as district councils.
	The relationship between counties and parishes is generally good—obviously, it varies in different parts of the country; I am very knowledgeable about the Essex experience—with a mutual understanding of each other's needs existing between the two tiers. In fact, it is generally county council officers who go to parish meetings, not district council officers. I have eight parishes; I go with my officers to meetings and we do most of the talking because the district officers are not there.
	It would be remiss not to utilise this knowledge and understanding when creating—and, indeed, abolishing—parish councils. It would be considered unacceptable to make decisions, for example, on planning and transport, without the involvement of all the tiers—county councils, district councils and parish councils. Given the democratic and community-focused role of the parish councils, there needs to be a similar level of inclusivity to determine their existence.
	Surely the Minister can visualise the bickering that will occur between the different tiers even if, as the Under-Secretary of State said in the other place, there will be no conflict because county councils will have no governance role and no say in the matter. Does the Minister not understand the influence of county council decisions even on the most local tier of government such as the parish?
	Of even greater concern is that if a parish council thought it was being treated unfairly—or, indeed, facing termination—there is no real appeal system. We were reassured in another place that such concerns would not arise as there was always the judicial process. We strongly disagree and argue profusely that this is not an option for parish councils. Very few, if any, parish councils have the resources and time to go through such an expensive and uncertain process.
	While we understand the Government's concerns about the disagreements that might occur if counties were included as principal councils, we would argue that greater conflict would occur if they were not given the same powers to undertake these community reviews. At the moment, Essex has 12 district councils but around 30 communities. The county council wishes to devolve money and the decision-making process to those 30 communities, but if we did not have some say in the matter, the whole process would fall apart.
	We support devolution and we hope to see the principle behind this part of the Bill introduced in other areas. However, we wish to see the Government acknowledge the importance of county councils in this part of the Bill. I beg to move.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: In an area divided into sub-areas, ultimately someone has to be the boss. As far as reviews are concerned, in the current situation the districts call the shots. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is proposing that, in addition to districts calling the shots, the county council should also be able to do so.

Lord Hanningfield: At the moment, it is the Secretary of State who calls the shots; the Bill proposes that districts should do so in the future. I am proposing that both districts and counties should be involved. At the moment, it is the Secretary of State, not the districts. Some districts do not want to have parish councils—in Essex, we do not have parish councils in some areas because the districts do not want them—and so it is the county council which promotes them.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: That means that the amendment would give it to both the district and the county council. That seems prima facie to be a recipe for conflict at the very least and mayhem at the very most. The Committee will know that I have listened very carefully in debates on the Bill, and from my experience in local government I understand that, given the opportunity for mischief, it will occur, because there will always be a conflict. I should have thought that the sensible way out of this is for one or the other to have it, but not both. In fact what has been proposed, in the pursuit of equity or justice, is to allow both to impose their will over the other. Ultimately, I do not think that is a very good recipe.
	I take the slight chastisement from the noble Lord that we have a new situation in which the power is being taken away from the centre and is being given to a unit of local government, which is the district. The noble Lord is perfectly entitled to say that the appropriate unit and level is the county council and not the district. I should have thought that if we are really in pursuit of devolving power down as far as possible, the district council is perfectly able and big enough. I understand the resource element and the administrative back-up that is required, but it is worth a try, so I favour the district and not including the county council.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I had not intended to intervene, but I feel rather provoked by the noble Lord, Lord Graham, to point out that there is no question here about anyone imposing their will on anyone. This is about what happens when the parish itself seeks more status and the district council refuses to accept that. It happens far more regularly than perhaps the noble Lord would know from his London perspective. In that situation, the parish council will quite often come to the county council and say, "Can you help us? We want more standing, but we cannot get it because we have a difficult district to deal with". There are times when the county council, from a bit of a distance, can take a more rational view of the powers of parish councils than the district can. I am rather inclined to support the amendment on the basis that, from the point of view of the parish, which for me is the important perspective, the amendment improves its chances and aids flexibility.

Baroness Crawley: I am grateful to noble Lords for their interventions and for the manner in which the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, moved his amendment and his stout defence of county councils. I once tried to become a member of Oxfordshire County Council, but the good people of Oxfordshire in their wisdom decided that that was not a good idea.
	The noble Lord seeks in the amendment to allow county councils to conduct community governance reviews. First, let me make it clear that any system that allowed both a district council and a county council to conduct community governance reviews would simply not work. We have to decide whether it is to be the district or the county council that carries out that function. I assume, so that I can cut out a lot of text, that we are agreed that we are not talking about the possibility of both tiers carrying out governance reviews.

Lord Hanningfield: If we are going to improve three-tier working, the reviews should be carried out in that way. In Braintree in Essex, we are doing it with the three tiers working together, to try to make the whole relationship between the three tiers work. If we are not going to do that, we are not going to make this whole thing work.
	On my support for parish councils, I got into local government because my father spent something like 40 years on a parish council. That is how it all started and that is why I am here now. I greatly support parish councils, not just county councils. I want to see the whole thing work and we should look at how we can involve the three tiers in creating these governance reviews.

Baroness Crawley: I am grateful to the noble Lord for enlightening me, but this is where we very much disagree with him. If we were to allow the county and the district to undertake a review, we might come to a stage of both councils disagreeing. What if they were to disagree? Let us imagine a situation where the district council wishes to create a parish and makes such a recommendation. However, the county council decides that it does not agree, conducts a community governance review and decides to abolish the parish. This would lead to, if not confusion, a near-anarchic situation over who is responsible, as well as increased costs and, no doubt, legal challenges on which council had the right to decide. I hear what the noble Lord has said—

Lord Hanningfield: I want to reiterate what the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, because, generally, the districts do not create parishes. There are two new parish councils in Essex which the districts refused to create. The county council backed them and gave them money to start up. The district councils have stopped financing any parish councils in most districts in Essex because the district councils say that they cannot afford to. We, the county council, are this year giving every parish council £1,000 for IT equipment. Generally, county councils, not the districts, support the formation of parish councils. I fear that this legislation will lead to fewer parish councils. We have lived with this situation for years and years, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, although she has not done so for as many years as me, because she is much younger. We know the practicalities. What the Government are suggesting in this legislation just will not result in the creation of more parish councils.

Baroness Crawley: I understand that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, have enormous experience in these matters, and I respect that. They have obviously come across some tetchy situations, to say the least, between parishes and districts. However, it is the Government's view that when these situations arise, they are very much in the minority. On that basis, we are moving forward with our preferred option of the districts conducting the community governance reviews, rather than the counties. Perhaps if I may move on a little more, I can cover some of the noble Lord's concerns.
	Reviews of parish arrangements are currently conducted by district councils under the Local Government and Rating Act 1997. For more than 30 years, it has been the responsibility of district councils to conduct these reviews. In 2005, we established a technical working group to look at the process within the 1997 Act. That working group, which included the LGA, NALC, the Association of London Government—now London Councils—and the Electoral Commission, considered whether the county councils or the district councils should conduct community governance reviews. As one can see in the Bill, we concluded, after much discussion, that the existing situation should be retained and district councils should continue to fulfil this role. The Government are sure that county councils would be perfectly capable of conducting reviews if the role were passed to them. However, we have heard no completely compelling argument, as yet, as to why the reviews should not be conducted by the districts.
	The Bill's proposals are about devolving power from central government to local government. We have sought the principle of subsidiarity by transferring responsibility to the most local level at which it is practical for a function to be carried out. This means that in most parts of England community governance reviews should be carried out by the appropriate district or unitary council. That tier is the closest to parishes and their parish and town councils. The district or unitary councils work closely with parishes and are thereby aware of those parishes' needs and aspirations when carrying out reviews.
	Historically, parish reviews have been the function of district councils, as my noble friend Lord Graham said. These principal councils have, over many years, built up a bank of experience and expertise in conducting parish reviews in their local areas. Surely, by taking this function away from district councils and giving it to county councils, we would be saying to district councils that we think that it can be done better by another tier of local government. Obviously, the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, believes that, but we are not convinced that there is enough evidence to take away that historic role from district councils.
	We are aware that the National Association of Local Councils, NALC, thinks that counties should undertake reviews. It contends that the main reason for its opposition to districts conducting such reviews is that any new community governance arrangements, such as setting up a new parish or a town council, might jeopardise the district council's role in the provision of services at the local level. NALC contends that by implication, in relation to conducting reviews, whether instigated by petitioners or not, a principal council may start a review with opinions already firmly entrenched in opposition to any new arrangements.
	However, we believe that NALC's concern that districts will undertake reviews and that some of them may already be hostile to new community governance arrangements is somewhat excessive. As the Committee is aware, under the present legislation, the Secretary of State is responsible for taking decisions following reviews by district councils. Very occasionally, we are made aware from review recommendations that there are tensions between district councils and petitioners, but, as I said earlier, we believe such cases to be in the minority.
	Under Clause 95, any principal council conducting a review would need to take account of the views of local electors in reaching decisions on community governance. Under Clause 95(3), the principal council must consult any other body, including a local authority, that may have an interest in a review, and the relevant current county council would also have to be consulted. Therefore, the county council's representation would have to be taken into account by individual principal councils.
	In conclusion, until we hear what we believe to be compelling arguments as to why this function should be taken away from county councils, we will not be persuaded that that should happen, so I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Hanningfield: I knew of the NALC situation because, as I suspect is obvious, I work closely with it and with the Essex branch of NALC—the Essex Association of Local Councils. I am committed to creating more parish councils. What NALC says is absolutely true, but the origins of the problem go back to the creation of district councils in 1974. Those created in 1974 were often an amalgamation of lots of small towns. However, having created their own body, district councils are reluctant to give powers back to the small towns. Certainly in Essex and other parts of the country, we find that district councils are resistant to allowing the creation of town councils. In Essex, where we do not have town or parish councils, it is because the districts are resistant to returning to the pre-1974 situation, as they see it, and to the areas that now make up the new district councils.
	I assure the Committee that, if it is left to the district councils, there will not be many parish councils. Where agreement has been reached on parish councils, most of the area is already parished. I want to see parish councils in the areas that are not parished, and the county council could do that better than the district councils. Therefore, perhaps if we were to have one principal tier, it should be the county councils. On the other hand, county councils are currently trying to work better with district councils, and we do not want to take a power away from them.
	I think that there could be a solution. I am afraid that what the Government propose here is wrong and we will have to look for other ways of proceeding. Obviously, we will obviously pursue this matter further at later stages of the Bill but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 204E not moved.]
	Clause 104 agreed to.

Lord Hanningfield: moved Amendment No. 204F:
	Before Clause 105, insert the following new Clause—
	"CHAPTER A1Transfer of functionsTransfer of functions
	The Secretary of State shall by order provide for the following functions to be transferred from any regional or statutory bodies to relevant local authorities—
	(a) housing;(b) planning;(c) transport;(d) learning and skills;(e) economic development."

Lord Hanningfield: This is a major amendment. At Second Reading, many noble Lords mentioned that this piece of legislation does not demonstrate the radical devolutionary proposal anticipated in the White Paper. We remain the second most-centralised country in Europe after Malta.
	This proposed new clause would seek to ensure that the Government fulfilled their rhetoric by putting in the Bill a truly devolutionary measure. If local authorities are community leaders, surely they should have strategic powers over housing, planning, transport, learning and skills and economic development. Those powers are held by central government and government-controlled quangos which cannot possibly know the local needs of every town, county and shire in England. This clause addresses the concerns expressed by many interested parties, including the LGA. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, has had to leave us this afternoon, otherwise he would have spoken in support of the amendment.
	It is common sense to realise that place-shaping will occur only when those who are close to their communities, those who know the unique strengths and weaknesses of their areas, and those who are elected by their people are handed proper control of the areas that they govern. In an era of globalisation, we still have one of the most centralised and inflexible states in the world. To compete at a global level, and to ensure prosperity and a better quality of life, we need our economy to be flexible. I am sure that it is because of the over-regulated and overcentralised features of our state that some of our great cities—Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle—are only half as prosperous as their European counterparts.
	An analysis carried out by the LGA and the EC demonstrates hard economic evidence that it is at the geographical level of the city, the city region or shire that the economy functions. However, the economy can only function to its potential when local authorities can make their own decisions and implement local solutions to the unique challenges that face their local areas. That will happen when local authorities can make their own judgments; for example, with regard to benefits, welfare-to-work rules and when there is a more devolved framework for skills. That will ensure that there is no skills mismatch between local people and industries that occupy that area, ensuring fuller employment and prosperity.
	On housing, the top-down target mechanism will never succeed. The Government should be bolder in enabling councils to deliver their supply of new housing.
	All those points are intertwined. Essentially the crux of the matter is that local authorities should have the power to make decisions that will affect the economic development of their unique place. The Bill appears to have ignored the recommendations made by the Lyons report, which would have been key to the devolutionary measures that we seek. Flexibility will come only when powers are localised. I beg to move.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I find myself in the unusual position of supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, but coming at it from the opposite perspective. On these Benches, we have always believed that the regional level of government is absolutely appropriate and correct for some decisions at some times. The question is about when such a size is the appropriate measure. The experience of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is of Essex, which in a European context is the size of a region in itself. There are other counties and local authority areas which are not big enough. It seems to us on these Benches that, for some decisions, the regional tier of government is absolutely right.
	However, there were a number of problems with the way in which the Government attempted its regional agenda. One was certainly that some of the English regions are simply too big. The South East region is enormous, covering an area from Bournemouth to Dover, then up to London and as far as Milton Keynes. It is simply too big to have any sense of coherence. It certainly has no sense of local identity in the way in which the electorate relate it. That was the first problem.
	The second was that the regional agenda never really involved proper devolution from central government down to democratically accountable regions. It was simply that the bureaucracy was moved from Whitehall out to the regions, but there was no sense in which democratically accountable people from those regions had a say in what was going on. From the point of view of those of us on these Benches, that has been the big weakness of the Government's approach. If we understand what is now proposed, the only part of the regional agenda with any form of democratic accountability—the regional assemblies made up of councillors—is now to be removed. Therefore, all the regional powers will remain, in effect, with quangos or civil servants who just happen to be based in regions rather than in Whitehall. It does not in any sense represent devolution. We on these Benches would certainly support the notion that it is time for a rethink of how regional decisions are made, although coming at it from a rather different perspective from the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. We accept that local authorities, as currently constituted, are not always the right size of decision-making body for the sorts of decisions we have to make.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: This is a good amendment, but I am not going to support it. It is good because it raises issues which are coming to the top of the agenda. Whether one reflects on the fact that things have been done in the past which can be done better in the future—such as what the amendment seeks to do—is a moot point. No doubt the Minister will help us. But there is a mood and a determination in government not merely to create the fabric but to do the job. What we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, is laudable: democracy needs to play a full part. But, more than having the right committee or powers, the job itself must be done.
	When we looked at the Greater London Bill, which is still to come back to the House of Lords, we were trying to ensure that responsibilities in housing, for instance, were strengthened by widening the strategic responsibility. Sadly, when we look at the figures and opportunities, there are some people with powers to do things who do not do them for a variety of reasons. I am always conscious, as is every Member of the House of Lords who has been a Member of the other place, that the greatest misery we see in our constituency surgeries is when people come to us who are living in either poor housing or no housing at all. I am therefore strongly of the belief that the weapons to be used in housing—and transport and economic development, for instance—need to be wielded by a tier of government which is big enough and, bluntly, strong enough, to carry through what is required.
	I am of course not competent to lay down what is required in every place. But I certainly think that to take away from the regional or statutory bodies and transfer to relevant—it is interesting what "relevant" means in this context—local authorities is something which needs not to be resisted, but discussed and debated. I look forward to what the Minister has to say. I sense that if we are to complete the jobs that need to be done in housing, planning, transport and economic development, we need as big a weapon and set of resources as possible.

Lord Smith of Leigh: First, I declare an interest as the chairman of the executive board of the North West Regional Assembly, but for how much longer I leave Members to think about. It is interesting that the Conservative Party has suddenly become localist and devolutionary, which I welcome because I have long been so, and have long thought that local authorities could do much more than they already did and could take the powers of others.
	However, the amendment is actually too simplistic. In terms of what is being devolved, it is unambitious. What is wrong with health? What is wrong with crime? What is wrong with other functions of government that could be devolved to local authorities? I also think that it is wrong in that that there is a kind of tyranny of local boundaries. Where do local boundaries reflect real life? Very few areas have a boundary that is the same as its local economy. Therefore, there needs to be collaboration between authorities if they are to be effective in terms of the devolution—which I agree with—to groups of local authorities of economic development, learning and skills, transport and so on. We must learn to work together.
	I am also the leader of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities. We work well within Greater Manchester, but I cannot say that it uses the boundary of the Manchester city region these days, because it moves out of the boundary areas created in 1972-74. It includes parts of Cheshire, parts of Derbyshire, and other parts which are outside the current boundaries. We try to work with them, but it is much more difficult working beyond Greater Manchester.
	We must learn to have a mixed view of this. Who is going to fund our transport schemes, for example? Central government. They will want to identify what schemes go forward. One of the great achievements of regional assemblies was the Government realising that they did not have enough money to fund all the ambitions of local authorities and developing a process called the regional funding allocation. That said to regions, "Come up with your ideas of where our priorities should be". When it came in the north-west, we realised that we had funding for about £1.3 billion of projects, but everyone thought that promises had been made by the Department for Transport for some £3 billion. There was clearly going to be some disappointment for those who were not going to get funding.
	We came together on a regional basis, and agreed what we felt would make a real difference to our region in improving its economy and environment. Remarkably, we achieved a reasonable settlement, and I think that that happened across the country. There are times that we need to work together as local authorities. We cannot assume that it can all be handed out to local authorities and expect them to do the job—although, as I say, I an a great devolutionist. We must work together. I am a great exponent of the Government's idea in the White Paper of multi-area agreements, which can actually achieve some of these objectives. I am in favour of devolution. I welcome the conversion, but this is not it.

Baroness Andrews: We have had an important debate. The unifying theme running through it is that decisions must be taken at the right level in order to be effective. Part of the debate has essentially been on where those right levels are, and what the balance between regional, sub-regional and local is. It is about finding the most effective and democratic way to do things. It has been a lively debate, and I say to my noble friends that I absolutely agree that collaboration between local authorities has progressed quite a lot in recent years, as it needed to. However, I cannot accept the amendment. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Lockhart, is not in his place because I know how passionately he feels about this and that he reflects the view of the Local Government Association.
	I agree with a great deal that the noble Lord said, and much of it is reflected in the direction of travel that we are following. I shall give a couple of examples of that. On 28 June, the Statement on machinery of government changes announced a key devolutionary step in relation to skills and education, as funding for education for 16 to 19 year-olds will in future go to schools and colleges via the local authority education budget. In the interaction between regional and local there needs to be mutual influence and respect, and organisations at local level will be consulted by regional and statutory bodies on functions such as RDAs.
	Another opportunity was created by Section 2 of the Local Government Act 2000 and is the power of well-being. It is broad and powerful and covers economic, social or environmental powers in relation to that function. I know that Essex County Council has already used it in relation to its highways function of removing abandoned vehicles from the roads. That is an important specific use of the power. There is nothing to stop local authorities up and down the country using the power of well-being to take on functional responsibilities in the way that the noble Lord mentioned.
	I think there is general agreement in the Committee that there must be an important role for higher spatial levels. We need to address regional disparities and powerfully to link up regional economies, skills policies and housing policies. They all sit together and cannot be managed locally and competitively. There has to be a strategy and a vision behind the scope of what is needed if we are to get maximum efficiency, value for money and help available to people. We are looking to the regional level to support and join up in order to maximise efficiency and equity.
	If noble Lords can be patient for a little longer, I shall say that we are expecting the report of the sub-national economic development and regeneration review very shortly. Highly skilled and committed people have been wrestling for some time with precisely these issues and have been examining the important and complex issue of the different spatial levels and how they best relate to the powers and functions of devolved government. I cannot comment in advance on that, but it has set out the direction of the Government.
	Only last week my noble friend spoke to the Sustainable Communities Bill, as did the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. That originated with the noble Lord's party and now has cross-party support. Its sets in place a mechanism whereby the Secretary of State will be under a duty to invite proposals from local authorities which they consider would contribute to promoting the sustainability of local communities. It provides for requests for a transfer of functions from one person to another following consultation and agreement. Clause 3 requires proposals to be shortlisted by representatives of local government, for the Secretary of State to decide which to implement.
	Those sorts of things are quite recent. They are powerful, related and add up to a direction of travel that I am sure the noble Lord would applaud, so if I cannot go as far as he wants today, we have gone quite a long way, and we will go further in meeting the opportunities that he described in his amendment.

Lord Hanningfield: I thank the Minister for her answer and the noble Lords, Lord Graham and Lord Smith, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who spoke somewhat in support of what I was proposing. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, said that we have to work together with other partners, and I accept that. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, Essex is a big place; we probably do not need to work with other partners as much as some other places. She also spoke about the levels at which decisions are taken. In England we probably need different decision-making processes in different parts of the country, not one blueprint for the whole country, because that does not work as well. For the reasons I gave, we are not doing as well economically as we could, so some decisions should be made locally in some parts that do not need to be made locally in other parts. Governments are prone to have one national scheme, rather than trying to see how each part of the country can be improved in a different way; when they were in power, my own Government were exactly the same.
	I did not expect the Minister to accept the amendment. We had a good debate on it and we will wait for the sub-regional review, which I gather is imminent. This debate was today. If that statement comes tomorrow or the next day, let us hope that it gives us some of the goodies that we are anticipating. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 105 [Application of Chapter: responsible local authorities]:

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204G:
	Clause 105, page 67, line 1, leave out from "England" to end of line 2

Lord Greaves: After that aperitif from the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, we are now firmly into Part 5. It is an extremely important part of the Bill. Chapter 1 is about local area agreements and community strategies, which are at the heart of the Government's claim that this is a devolutionary Bill that will transform the role of local authorities.
	Amendment No. 204G is about two-tier areas, but I have to say something briefly about local area agreements in general to put it into context. The Bill will place a duty on lead local authorities, which it calls "responsible local authorities", to produce a local area agreement, consult and seek the participation of named partners and produce a community strategy, of which they have to take account when they are setting the local area agreement. It places a duty on local authorities and named partners to co-operate with each other to agree named, relevant targets within the local area agreement and to have regard to those targets once the local area agreement has been created. That sums up what a local area agreement is about.
	If local area agreements work well they will put local authorities at the heart of the different organisations, partnerships and networks that now create a system of local governance. They put the responsible local authority at the centre of a web—if he were still in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Graham, would call it a web of intrigue for plotting—or a network of organisations and agencies of all kinds. If they work well, they will restore to local authorities the primacy of decision-making and negotiation with other bodies that they deserve as the only democratically elected bodies. The other side is the fear that the system that the Government are setting up will be very centralist because the system of putting together and changing local area agreements will be subject to the approval of the Secretary of State and one fears that there will be a great deal of central control of what is done and how it is done, including the 35 national targets. That is the framework and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, will talk about the pilots, particularly the pilot in Wigan which, as a relatively compact urban authority, seems ideally suited to local area agreements.
	Amendment No. 204G and Amendment No. 204H, which is grouped with it, are about the status and responsibility of district councils and how they relate to local area agreements in two-tier areas; that is, in shire counties with districts. There is a huge diversity in such places. No two shire counties are the same, and some of them are very different indeed from each other. Some are relatively compact, some have relatively weak districts—particularly those districts which are south-east this and north-east that, and were cobbled together in 1973 and 1974—while others are very widespread. I think of my own Lancashire or of north Yorkshire next door, which is huge. Some places have relatively strong districts which feel they are very much the equal of the counties because in some cases they are based on former county boroughs; others have very strong traditions of local democratic self-government. There is a huge diversity. I do not want anybody to think that I am trying to impose a pattern; I am not. Everything put forward in these amendments is permissive in terms of what could happen. Part of the problem is that catering for variety is not necessarily in the Bill.
	Clause 105 refers to responsible local authorities. Clause 106 refers to partner authorities. From looking at the list of these authorities, it is clear that the partner authorities are the constellation of bodies which will surround the responsible, democratically elected local authority in a local agreement. They are local quangos, partnerships, joint authorities, some service delivery agencies and NHS bodies such as the PCT and NHS trusts, foundation trusts and so on, together with a number of national bodies, quangos and agencies, and, indeed, a little bit of the Secretary of State's activities as they impact on that area.
	People in some district councils fear that district councils are lumped together as a partner authority with the other partner authorities; a second status democratically elected authority as opposed to the counties in these areas. Yet district councils are different from all these other bodies precisely because they are democratically elected local authorities and have their own local strategic partnerships. So, within two-tier areas, you have the county level local strategic partnership which in some of the big counties is perhaps not seen as very local, and you have the local strategic partnerships at district level. The interaction of these and the interaction of the different authorities within a local area agreement seems to be something that has not yet been thought out properly.
	Amendment No. 204G would make the district council a responsible local authority. Amendment No. 204H sets out an alternative system for a local area agreement in two-tier areas, based on joint responsibility and equality of status between the county and the district. One local authority chief executive in Lancashire is going around saying that currently the districts are simply going to be glorified parish councils. Clearly, that is not acceptable. Amendment No. 204H also sets out that in appropriate places local area agreements could be made for part of the county and not for a whole county, where this is appropriate, where the county council area is really too big, and where the diversity—the different needs in different parts of the county—make that sensible.
	I refer to Lancashire, which has 12 districts. It extends from Skelmersdale, which is a Liverpool overspill town, to the edge of the Lake District and Morecambe Bay, from the Fylde Coast, places like St Annes and Thornton and Fleetwood, although not Blackpool itself of course which is a unitary taken out of it—which is slightly absurd for these purposes—and eastwards to the borders of Yorkshire in the Pennines. In the middle you have Preston, but not Blackburn, which is a unitary, and it extends southwards to the northern fringes of greater Manchester, and certainly areas which are part of the greater Manchester economic region.
	Under these circumstances, a great deal of diversity is needed. We need a system in which there can be local area agreements for less than the whole county—not necessarily just one district but perhaps a group of districts. It may be that the PCT areas are sensible where there is a county with a number of different PCTs within it. The needs are different, the circumstances are different, the local economies are different and the targets that need to be set down will be different. Under these circumstances, it really needs a degree of diversity and flexibility and an acceptance that the district councils are equal partners and not subsidiary partners.
	I have spent some time on this because it is a very important issue. Local area agreements seem to be tailored for fairly compact unitary councils. It is not clear at all that they will work well and not cause huge amounts of bureaucracy and problems in large far-flung counties. There is much confusion and concern, and, if we are going to have local area agreements, the Government have to think very carefully indeed about how they will work in places such as—and assuming that there are no unitary changes—the northern counties of Northumberland, Cumbria, Lancashire, North Yorkshire, Cheshire and many others. I beg to move.

Baroness Hanham: We would find some difficulty in supporting the amendment, although I hear how carefully the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, promoted it.
	The trouble with this proposal is that it is extremely bureaucratic. A number of county councils have a substantial number of district councils, and they would have to supervise and oversee a lot of community strategies. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, suggested that his amendment would make this a permissive power. I hope I have not misunderstood him, but in fact there is nothing in the amendment that is permissive at all. It makes it mandatory. We also find that difficult. So on this occasion we will not be able to support it.

Baroness Andrews: The noble Lord is absolutely right that this is an important part of the Bill. I am grateful to him and to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, for spelling out what is important about local area agreements and what is defective about the amendment. I shall point out other defects.
	We are making an extremely important change. It certainly builds on the work that local authorities have done in moving beyond their traditional service delivery in the local area agreements. These new local area agreements will be on a statutory basis for the first time and will go beyond everything that exists at the moment. They will cover everything that a local authority plans to do to improve its area, either in partnership with others—for example, with regard to community safety or economic activity—or indeed on its own. What is proposed will sweep away the current system through which central government, by way of a profusion of area-based funding initiatives, imposed targets and indicators, does business. It really is a very big change—a move towards simplification as a means of reaching agreement on a much smaller set of priorities.
	I turn to the spirit of the amendment. I could not agree more with the noble Lord that district councils have a very important character and role to play in this arrangement. They have their own democratic legitimacy, their own service responsibilities, and their distinct local characteristics. They engage in many ways rather better with their local communities than the counties and it is of paramount importance that they play a role in the negotiation and delivery of LAAs.
	Obviously, I understand the noble Lord's concern. He rightly talks about diversity. I am absolutely sympathetic to that. We cannot legislate to do away with diversity, but I suggest that the diversity in the targets, which will be negotiated from the bottom up, will reflect local concerns, local priorities and a way forward that will make the difference in different local areas.
	Briefly, we are putting districts on an equal footing with county councils and all other named partners in agreeing targets. That is what will count; agreement on what those targets will actually achieve. First, we specifically committed to a proportion of the national indicator set of 200—no longer 1,200—national targets that will set out the national priorities. Some of those will be set at district or even neighbourhood level, so that a particular district with a particular problem with, say, anti-social behaviour, will be able to set its own specific target.
	Secondly, we have also made provision for the county council to be required to consult all named partners, including districts, on the county-wide sustainable community strategy. That is the evidence base that will inform the local targets and pick up on the contrasting priorities, whether deprivation or whatever, of individual districts. We have also strengthened the powers of overview and scrutiny in the Bill by giving councils the power to require partner authorities of the LLA to attend overview and scrutiny committees, and are enhancing the districts' role in other ways. We will talk about that later. I reinforce the point that district authorities are different from the other partners in the list, but the important thing is that they have absolutely equal status when agreeing targets, which is where they will make the most important and effective contribution. It is also important to say that the existing provisions do not create primacy for upper-tier local authorities. Targets will be agreed in negotiation between upper-tier authorities and the other partners, although we know, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, that they are not the same as the other partners.
	Clause 108 introduces the procedural framework for local area agreements between the responsible authority, partner authorities and the Secretary of State. Clause 107 contains the local improvement targets. We want the provision of effective and coherent services, and I am sure that the noble Lord is at one with us on this. We are asking local authorities to look at complex needs and to see which of the 35 targets will be particularly important and relevant for them. That demands a very clear but shared view of priorities across a range of partners from counties and districts. It is absolutely vital that counties and districts agree on core priorities for their local area to avoid overlapping or contradictory targets. The process itself enables that to happen. District representation is absolutely vital. We will certainly set out in statutory guidance to accompany the Bill our view of minimum expectations so that the local districts that might be slightly laggard will know what we expect them to achieve. We also expect the sector to develop local solutions and to generate their own models of best practice. Some of the beacon awards now look at exemplary practice in two-tier working and ensuring that developing districts play their part.
	I am sympathetic to the noble Lord's amendments, and I hope that I have been able to reassure him about what we want to see and what we expect. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that the amendments would create a number of very problematic and unnecessary complications for the model, which we want to keep as transparent, effective and simple as possible. The amendments could create gridlock between counties and districts as they fight over targets; and multiple, overlapping and even contradictory agreements in the same county. They would also require the Government to set out in regulations how districts and counties must work together, which we would not want to do in the spirit of the Bill. I hope that that explanation reassures the noble Lord and that he might feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Greaves: I am not reassured at all, I am afraid, for which I apologise to the Minister. However, the system that will be put into operation in shire counties is already very bureaucratic. It will require a huge amount of negotiation and will take up a large amount of time of a large number of district council officers. Big counties may sometimes seem to have a limitless number of officers to do these things, but districts do not; they are very often quite tightly run and have a relatively small number of staff, for fairly obvious reasons.
	In a county the size of Lancashire—I will speak about Lancashire again because it is the county that I know best; it is also one of the biggest and most diverse counties—one size fits all will simply not work across the county. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, said that we would have local community strategies all over the place. We are going to have those already. Every district has a local community strategy, and the county will have a community strategy. Simply meshing those together will require a huge amount of time and energy. So they will exist already. The Minister says that there will be equality because there must be agreements. If there must be agreements, there must be agreements, and it does not matter whether they are under my proposed system or the Government's proposed system for a whole county in these circumstances. If it is an agreement, it is an agreement. If there is no agreement and there is gridlock—to use her word—the districts' views will not be the ones that prevail when the Minister comes along. The arrangements under the local area agreement scheme that I propose would be permissive. They would have to be discussed and agreed in each county. In some cases, we might well be talking about a whole county, so it would be permissive.
	The idea that the same local area agreement and targets can apply to Rossendale, Morecombe, Ormskirk and Nelson is nonsense. If there are going to be different targets, it would be far better for them to be sub-county—or sub-region, as we call east Lancashire, central Lancashire and so on—area agreements, and for them to apply at the level at which they will be relevant and will matter rather than trying to build them all into a county-wide local area agreement.
	I am not satisfied at all. The Government need to think a great deal more about how this will work. That is my appeal to them this evening. If we are going to have local area agreements, will the Government look at these areas again? In some of the large counties with large, powerful districts, it will be a nightmare unless it is sorted out. Many people at district level in these places do not think that it is sorted out. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, although we will have to talk about this matter again.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 204H not moved.]
	Clause 105 agreed to.
	Clause 106 [Application of Chapter: partner authorities]:

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 204HA:
	Clause 106, page 67, line 14, after "other" insert "public sector health"

Baroness Hamwee: Amendment No. 204HA is grouped with Amendments Nos. 206 and 207 to 209 in the name of my noble friend Lady Scott, who will speak to them, and with Amendments Nos. 205 and 207A. My amendment is probably the least of these. It takes us to the clause that tells us who the partner authorities are; I suspect that the term "partner" will crop up a good deal in this discussion. The amendment is simply probing. It seeks to insert the words "public sector health" into "other establishment or facility", not because I am particularly making the case for public sector health establishments and facilities—that case might be made at another point—but to understand what the term "other establishment or facility" means in this context. It comes after a reference to a hospital, and it would be helpful to know what the Government have in mind so that we all know who we will be working with. I beg to move.

Lord Smith of Leigh: Amendment No. 205, in this group, is tabled in my name. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about the importance of this section of the Bill. Speaking as the leader of Wigan local authority, which has been a pilot LEA, I think that this is a really important mechanism for delivering the place-shaping agenda. I listened with care to the noble Lord's arguments. We need to be careful that we get the places right. If they are too big, they will not reflect local needs.
	Under Clause 106, the Government are trying to maintain a balance between the need to engage with partners that will achieve this place-shaping agenda and a practical concern for having organisations that can have meaningful dialogue together given the large and disparate number there could be. As the leader of a local authority, I am not convinced that we want an endless list of organisations with which we might have to engage, because that can lead to practical problems.
	There are no references to educational organisations in this list. I cannot conceive of a single local area agreement that would not involve education, whether it is participation, attainment or skills. Some part of the education agenda will be a key part of a local area agreement, so we have to engage with schools and other partners. I understand the issues that my noble friend has already expressed on schools, which I have tried to cover in a later amendment. Amendment No. 205 simply concerns the post-16 sector where it is separate from FE and sixth-form colleges. I hope that my noble friend understands why local authorities think that this is important.
	I will be interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, speak to her Amendment No. 207. I am not sure that I share her view that higher education necessarily should be in a local area agreement. It depends on the nature. On the Greater Manchester involvement, we have five universities actively engaged with us in a sub-regional context in developing the economy and the higher skills agenda. I am not sure this is always at a local level. Clearly, there are local issues in a physical sense with higher education, but in a strategic role it is beyond the boundaries of most local authorities.

Baroness Hanham: My noble friend Lord Hanningfield and I have attached our names to Amendments Nos. 206 and 207, but we broadly support this whole group, which would make a much more comprehensive list of partner authorities than is there already. This section already contains welcome legislative recognition of local area agreements, which we have been discussing. These will become the primary mechanism for channelling public funds into areas prioritised by local people. So the synergistic rewards of closer co-operation are also welcome. It is therefore important that the list of partner organisations is sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that local authorities have the flexibility to work with all possible partners in their area.
	More specifically, I believe that there are dangers in omitting probation trusts, which the Government are introducing under the Offender Management Bill, from the list of partners. If we truly wish to engage everyone of relevance in improving the social, economic and environmental well-being of an area, we must ensure that strategic partners are not omitted. The probation trust is an excellent example of a partner likely to be accountable for many of the priorities selected by communities.
	Extending the list to ensure that a wider variety of partners have a duty to co-operate will significantly enhance the ability of the public sector to deliver local area agreement outcomes that make a significant difference to the communities they serve and will provide a broad rationale for them. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's response, particularly about probation trusts.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Amendments Nos. 206, 207 and 209 are tabled in this group. Amendments Nos. 206 and 207 originated from the Local Government Association, which has some concerns that the list of partner authorities which can be included in a local area agreement is drawn as widely as possible. I suspect that the Minister will say, "Well you have to stop the list somewhere. You simply cannot keep adding to it". In general, I would have some sympathy with that reply. However, one of the difficulties is that, when government create a statutory framework and name a lot of people, there is always the danger that if people are not included on the list, their exclusion is either seen as downgrading them or as making it not possible for them to co-operate in the future.
	My amendments are probing, providing an opportunity for the Minister to explain how the current list of partners has been drawn up and what a local authority can do if it has a particular target for which it requires the help of someone who is not on the list. From that perspective I can help the noble Lord who asked about higher education. It is not so much the role of higher education as an educational establishment per se. In Ipswich, which I know very well, we are creating a new university the role of which as a driver for economic regeneration on the waterfront is huge, as will be the impact on the demography of the town and so on. From that point of view, co-operation with the university in its broadest sense will be key.
	Amendment No. 206 is slightly less probing and more about trying to understand why the probation trusts have not been included. The noble Baroness can help us on that. I added Amendment No. 209, which mentions post offices, as an opportunity to say that I find it quite difficult to understand why the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission merits a place in the Bill and the local post office does not. Whether people are in urban or rural areas, post offices are always important. All the amendments provide a chance for the Minister to explain how the organisations in the Bill have been chosen.

Lord Greaves: My Amendment No. 207 probes two points. First, this is one of a number of opportunities in this part of the Bill to probe the relationship between the local strategic partnerships and the local area agreement. Again, I am speaking specifically about two-tier areas. For example, Lancashire has 12 local strategic partnerships at district level and one at county level, which must be replicated in many counties. In terms of the local impact of partnership working and co-ordinated investment, district level partnerships have been more important than the county partnership. As I understand it, the county partnership does not even have representation from every district on it and may have minimal representation from the districts in the county, which to some of us is entirely unacceptable and is being argued about, albeit not very successfully. What will be the relationship between the local strategic partnerships and the local area agreement if they are not part of it? If they are part of it, how will the LEA cope with the fact that there are 12 of them scattered around, doing their own thing?
	My second point very much relates to east Lancashire. Elevate, the housing market renewal pathfinder in east Lancashire, along with eight others throughout the country, is responsible for a very substantial investment of channelling and government funds. The figure for east Lancashire is somewhere between £40 million and £50 million a year—I should have looked that up, but I did not—which is then channelled through the district councils. That is an important element of public investment in east Lancashire. How, then, does the pathfinder fit into the local area agreement? What is their relationship?
	I shall comment briefly on what the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, said about further education colleges. That issue again illustrates the difficulties in large two-tier areas. I have been adding up in my head how many FE colleges there are in Lancashire, and I have counted eight, although there may be more. Bringing in all eight causes organisational bureaucratic difficulties of exactly the kind I was talking about with regard to having an LEA in an area such as Lancashire.

Baroness Andrews: This is an important part of our debate. I hope to go some way to explaining how local area agreements will work. I will be as swift as I can in going through the various options.
	The exclusions are defined by a systematic set of principles, which I will come to. I hope it will be clear to noble Lords that it is by no means a random process. The list was compiled in line with a number of important criteria. Those criteria are essentially based on the notion of key partnerships, which are required to deliver the key elements and characteristics of the place. It was never conceived as an endless list. We all know the difficulties of putting any list into legislation.
	Apart from the notion of what constituted the key sustainable important partnerships, though, there were other criteria, which would explain some of the exclusions: that the partner was a public body, not a private business; that it would make sense for that body to be involved in strategic negotiations; that in placing the body under these duties we were not imposing an unreasonable burden either on it or on the responsible local authority. When we come to talk about the voluntary sector, we will use that sort of argument. Another criterion is that the body in question had a clear legal identity. Again, when we talk about local strategic partnerships, that will be a factor in that sort of argument.
	I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that an organisation's absence from the list does not mean it is not there to be worked with. There is enormous scope. There is clear instruction to local area agreement makers that they have to move beyond the list to ensure that their targets are sympathetic, comprehensive and robust—all those things.
	We have also listened to the debates in another place about composition. We added some more, particularly health bodies. In doing so, we looked at the balance between overcomplicating things, enhancing partnership working and not imposing any unnecessary further bodies. Achieving the balance of what is necessary to achieve what you want without overloading the system is very important.
	On her Amendment No. 204HA, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has asked me to define what we meant by "other establishment facility" in relation to NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts in Clause 106(1)(b). The clause refers to Clause 106(3), which sets out that it is NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts running such hospitals and other establishments or facilities. It relates to public sector health providers such as GPs and so on. There are other examples I could give. That is how it ties in; it is a comprehensive definition that would pick up what the noble Baroness is concerned about, so her amendment is not necessary.
	There are a series of reasons why different parts of the education establishment fall into different categories, either because of the nature of the partnerships they already hold or because of what it would mean to bring a school into a direct relationship, with the potential burden not only on the school but also on the area if, for example, it has 300 schools.
	Sixth-form colleges and FE colleges are incredibly important local organisations for education, skills and learning. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, argues that it would be better to have them in because then skills gaps and lifelong learning could be properly addressed. I have no doubt that he is right to say that they have to be involved in tackling those issues, but most of those colleges already fully recognise the importance of working closely with local authorities, or have a local-authority-nominated member on their governing bodies. Many are active members of the 14-to-19 partnerships within local authority areas. We have made it clear in the FE reform White Paper that the strategic lead for 14 to 19 now lies with local authorities. In the recent changes in the machinery of government we indicated that funding for 14-to-19 learners would be routed through local authorities. We have a network of partnerships that we think will pick up the FE colleges without the need to put them in the Bill. The primary legislation we will need for the new framework for 16-to-19 education will provide an opportunity to determine the breadth of the local authority role and its ability to influence delivery.
	We must recognise that FE colleges have been transformed in recent years. One of the complications is that they often draw their students from wide catchment areas. For example, Warwickshire has students attending from across the country, and I hear that Plymouth has 30,000 students from across the country attending its courses. We are not looking at traditional models of FE colleges here, but that will not stop colleges from co-operating on a voluntary basis where appropriate. We hope they will, and we will make it abundantly clear in statutory guidance that we expect them to.
	A special set of circumstances govern regional offender managers and probation trusts. The noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Scott, have rightly argued that the list of partner authorities will need to reflect the proposed legislative changes for probation services in the Offender Management Bill. It is essential, I do not have to say, that bodies commissioned to deliver probation services are fully involved in the LAA targets and take account of them. There is possibly nothing more important than community safety, rehabilitation and addressing all the things that we know contribute to anti-social behaviour in local communities. There must be co-ordination; anti-social behaviour cannot be separated out from reoffending and homelessness, for example.
	I am pleased to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that an amendment to the Offender Management Bill passed in Committee in this House on 21 May will achieve that. In purely legislative terms—it has to be a device, because this is where the legal battle will happen—it will add to the list of partner authorities in the Bill the Secretary of State where exercising her functions for ensuring the provision of probation services. It makes clear that her power to delegate specific functions for specific purposes applies in that case. That means that the duty will rest on the regional offender manager as the representative of the Secretary of State. We cannot name him in the Bill, but he is there. The regional offender manager will delegate that duty to co-operate, which means that the new lead providers—which in most cases will be the probation trust—will be the key partners in that. That will be reinforced by contracts, so that the lead provider will then engage with other partners in the LSP to agree and implement the LAA targets. That is how we have covered the relationship with regional offender management, and it was agreed with the partners, including the LGA.
	The same argument I made about FE colleges applies with greater force in universities. Every university has a separate charter. We would need to consider whether we needed to name each and every one of them in the legislation. That is one set of issues. The other set is that they draw their students from well beyond the local catchment area. A better solution would be to ensure that responsible local authorities consulted their local universities and equivalent bodies when drawing up their local area agreements. Again, we will put that into statutory guidance to make clear that that is the expectation.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: What might happen if a target in a local area related to crime and disorder and it was known that there was a problem coming from students in the university? How could the local authority ensure that the university co-operated in those circumstances?

Baroness Andrews: It would certainly be in the interests of the university to co-operate and of the local authority to invite it to bring forward what it considered to be disciplinary structures and evidence of how behaviour could be improved. It might be a housing issue, or one relating to student identification. It would be important for the university to bring its experience and range of powers to bear to contribute to that target. That is not too difficult.

Baroness Hanham: I refer the Minister back to probation trusts. I understood her to say that the Offender Management Bill is being amended to take account of the regional offender manager and probation trusts, but that is not effective as far as this Bill is concerned. I do not understand why it would not be more successful to amend it simply by putting into it the probation trusts as organisations that have to be consulted, rather than wait for an amended Offender Management Bill.

Baroness Andrews: As I understand it, it is a purely legislative problem. The Secretary of State has to delegate to the regional offender manager as his representative. We cannot name the regional offender managers in the Bill. The Bill provides for him then to delegate the duty to co-operate. My officials assure me that they have looked at this matter in some detail and that this is the device that works and is practicable, but I am happy to write to the noble Baroness to explain in more detail how it would work if that would help.

Baroness Hanham: I would be grateful if the Minister did that, because, as I understand it, the probation trusts have been set up by the Offender Management Bill and are virtually law. Therefore, even if the Secretary of State devolves power to regional offender managers, I still do not see why the trusts cannot be taken from the Offender Management Bill and be put into this Bill, thereby making the requirement to consult absolutely clear. The trouble about things being in other Bills is that nobody ever remembers them. It is relevant to the list of partners for the local area agreement. We will push to have the probation trusts put in the Bill at a later stage if we cannot do so today.

Baroness Andrews: I shall certainly write to the noble Baroness to explain the legal relationships and the delegation involved.
	Housing associations also fall into the category that we are discussing. There is no doubt that they have a role to play in the making of housing policy and related issues. However, they are not public bodies and do not fulfil the criteria. They are either charities, private companies or industrial and provident societies. We have sought to avoid naming organisations of that kind in the Bill. However, they should certainly be involved as voluntary partners in the creation of targets and the delivery of policy. Another problem with including housing associations is that, as we have seen with universities, they often manage properties well outside the area in which they are based. For example, Hyde Housing Association has to partner 54 local authorities. Moreover, the upcoming Cave review of regulation has looked at whether all parts of the domain of social housing should have a statutory duty to co-operate and engage with place-making. A lot is therefore happening in the field of further duties to co-operate. There is no reason why housing associations should not have an important voluntary role.
	The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also mentioned the water utilities. Water utilities, like the Post Office, are private companies. It is not appropriate to place such organisations in the Bill, not least because they have their own regulators. Ofwat is the economic regulator for the water companies; the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate are also involved; and the companies have their own consumer councils. They do not strictly belong in the Bill for that reason.
	Local strategic partnerships are a slightly different kettle of fish.

Lord Hanningfield: The Minister spoke earlier about the Sustainable Communities Bill. I was discussing rural post offices earlier today. We thought that the Sustainable Communities Bill might provide some way of keeping rural post offices going. That could be part of the LAA. These things need to join up somewhere. I do not know whether the Minister has the answer. She has just said that the Post Office could not necessarily be part of the LAA, but the Sustainable Communities Bill might make it so. These matters need to be thought about and discussed. The other Bill is going through this place at the same time as this one.

Baroness Andrews: My noble friend Lady Morgan is the expert on the Sustainable Communities Bill, so I shall have to take advice from her on that. I repeat that there is nothing in the Bill to preclude any of the non-named partners that we have mentioned from being involved in shaping the place, making the targets and putting their oar in as many ways as possible. However, I shall look at the Bill's relationship with the Sustainable Communities Bill.
	Local strategic partnerships, like housing market renewal pathfinders, do not have legal status. They are voluntary and it is therefore inappropriate to include them in the Bill. However, I emphasise to the noble Lord that the local strategic partnership is no ordinary partnership. It has a crucial role in helping to articulate, visualise and inform the local area agreement. It has been doing that with the LAAs. It is that body which brings together all the key local partners, voluntary and statutory, to co-ordinate their actions, of which there are some hugely successful examples.
	The clauses that we are discussing seek to ensure that responsible local authorities co-operate with all the partners and provision is made for them to consult. The local strategic partnership is crucial in bringing its intelligence, experience and inclusivity to the table.

Lord Greaves: The Minister talked about "it". In Lancashire, there are 13 of them. I do not quite understand how this works.

Baroness Andrews: Those 13 will have been working already with their local area agreements and will be reflecting the diversity of Lancashire, about which we heard a few moments ago. Ways of working will have to be found. I am absolutely sure that they will work together. A district authority may work with a local strategic partnership. It will have very different priorities and problems. Not only will some of 35 targets within the national indicator set relate to the district, but so also will the local targets, which we have not begun to address. There is no limit on the number of local targets that can be set. Each district could have a different local target if that diversity existed. The arrangements that we are making through the negotiating process must allow for those matters to work through and to be resolved.
	I think that I have addressed everything except the housing market renewal pathfinders.

Lord Dixon-Smith: I am sorry to intervene in this way late in this discussion, which has been very helpful and has covered the detail and complexity of a system which must involve the whole community, officials, government and quasi-government bodies if it is to work. It is a wonderful example of trying to spell out in legislation a really good local, co-operative arrangement. I mean that most sincerely. However, I have a difficulty with this. When I come to the first line of Clause 108, I read some words that are just like running into a brick wall from the point of view of handing powers down to local authorities and genuinely allowing them to get on with things and do them on their own. The clause says:
	"When the Secretary of State so directs, a responsible local authority must".
	That is just like running into a brick wall. It takes all the voluntariness out of the business. If the Secretary of State directs, the local authority has to. Worse than that, if the Secretary of State does not direct, it does not have to do anything.
	The matter is more complicated than that because the Secretary of State has the power to designate individual improvement targets. I must admit that, although my time studying the detail of the Bill has perhaps not been sufficiently great, I have not found what happens to them once they are designated. I have no doubt that the Minister will be able to clear things up for me on that but it is the principle that really worries me. Here we have a part of the Bill headed "Local area agreements" and "Co-operation of English authorities with local partners, etc", and we put into a clause like that these dreadful words that stop it dead in its tracks.

Baroness Andrews: We shall come on to those elements of debate under later amendments. Let me just reassure the noble Lord about something. One big change that we have made is to put the local area agreement on a statutory footing, because that is what we want to see and think would be most effective. We have lots of support for that. As he says, when,
	"the Secretary of State so directs, a responsible local authority must prepare"—
	but it is in the process of preparation, which we shall come to tease out in later amendments, that we shall see how democratic that process is and how the designated targets, as well as local improvement targets, will be arrived at and resolved, by an intense and thorough democratic process of negotiation between local authorities and regional offices representing the Secretary of State. It is not a new process, but it brings more within its scope. I hope that we shall have that debate later under the noble Lord's amendments when we look at that process.
	The balance that we are trying to achieve is that for the first time local authorities will determine not 1,200 targets or top-down targets but a number of targets that reflect their local priorities. They also reflect some national priorities, as we need to, but they are essentially reflecting those priorities that determine the character, needs and aspirations of local areas.
	To return to housing market renewal pathfinders, they do absolutely essential work in some of the most deprived areas of the country, but they are not legal entities, which is why we have difficulty naming them. They are already included in some of the partnership work of regional development agencies and English Heritage, for example. Therefore, they have their place in some of those umbrella organisations.
	I think that I have addressed all the different examples that were raised.

Baroness Hanham: We have been talking about housing. Amendment No. 207, which my noble friend Lord Hanningfield and I support, refers to "a housing association". I understand what the Minister has said in that housing associations go wider than the boundary that might be covered by the local agreement, but a registered social landlord would not be in that position. It is housing associations or private landlords who work with the local authority, and it is a worry that housing is not in this list anywhere, if the housing association cannot be put in. For all the reasons that we know, particularly over-crowding and homelessness, the targets that it may be necessary to introduce may be very real. It may require the agreement of a local housing association or a local registered social landlord to deal with that. Perhaps if we changed the words "a housing association" to "a registered social landlord", that would make it easier for the Minister to accept the amendment at a later stage.

Baroness Andrews: I do not think that that will help. We still have the issue of the status of the public body. However, if the noble Baroness will allow me, I shall take the matter away and consider it. The most important thing to bear in mind is that many voluntary organisations, large and small, are not in the Bill, and we shall discuss why that it is later. But there is nothing to preclude them from working together on the local area agreement with the statutory bodies. They will be absolutely welcome.

Lord Greaves: To pursue the matter of the housing market renewal set-up, I must admit that I do not know what the set-up is in other parts of the country. All I know is that in east Lancashire there is an organisation called Elevate, which is a partnership with a board and all sorts of things, which produces sub-regional plans and investment strategies way beyond the narrow question of housing, housing improvement and housing market renewal. It gets involved in all these other different things. If there is to be a local area agreement in east Lancashire, whether it is part of a county one or an east Lancashire one, it is difficult to see how it can be done without the integral involvement of an organisation that is one of the prime sources of public investment in the area. Rightly or wrongly, it has ambitions to be more than a partnership—and I do not know how it will be integrated into the local area agreement system.
	If the local area agreement is to mean anything at all, will it include all the investment that is going in from central government via Elevate in east Lancashire and the other pathfinders in the other parts of the north of England and the Midlands? Will the investment be channelled through county level through the LAA, or will it continue to be channelled direct to Elevate? That is a crucial question for those of us in east Lancashire who think that we have had a 15-year guarantee of continued investment. There are great worries that through the Lancashire local area agreement it will be diluted round the county. That is just one example of the kind of concerns that people have.

Baroness Andrews: I hope I am not repeating myself completely, but housing market renewal pathfinders are non-statutory partnerships. Clearly, any local area target in that area that is involved with improving housing or reducing homelessness will have to involve that major investment through Elevate, which is a hugely successful pathfinder. The point is that a non-statutory partnership is made up of local authorities and other key regional stakeholders, which work together as part of a concerted effort to revitalise some of the most deprived communities but, because they have no separate legal entity, cannot be named in the Bill. Because they also have a role in the regional development agencies in terms of housing spend, as well as English Heritage and place-making, they are at the table in other ways, so the noble Lord should not fear that they will be left out. They will certainly not be left out, but at the moment I cannot tell him what the financial arrangements are about those particular funds. I shall have to write to him about that.

Lord Greaves: It occurs to me that I should make a specific declaration of interest. I am the housing market renewal executive member on Pendle council, for my sins—when I am not here.

Baroness Hamwee: I do not think that the noble Lord's sins are so great.

Lord Greaves: You do not know.

Baroness Hamwee: Perhaps not.
	Earlier in the passage of this Bill, the Minister referred to this part of the Bill about local area agreements as being organic. I hear her saying that anybody can join in, but reading the Bill and listening to most of this debate, "organic" is about the last thing that I think they are. In the next group of amendments but one we will come to the brick wall mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith.
	Listening to the debate, a point occurs to me which occurred earlier to my noble friend; I think it was why I was a little confused about the health references. The partners are all identified by where they operate from, not by the people to whom they provide services. That is dealt with in my noble friend's next amendment. To be hung up on some of the definitions, as we have heard described, is distracting us terribly from what this should all be about. Although I recognise that the number of targets is reducing, if we did not have the targets we would not need this very tightly detailed provision. The targets are important because funding follows the targets. I am working myself up to say, "Let's scrap the lot of this and let the local authorities get on with it". It comes back so often to the funding. One has to satisfy central government's desperately convoluted ways of setting their own targets for who should qualify for central funding. It always takes us back to financial arrangements—but, as it is 6.50 pm, I will not go there.
	There is a huge amount of over-legislation and detail here which is distracting us from the principle and detracting from the principle. There are many trees here and it is sometimes difficult to see the wood. I shall be interested to go back and read the criteria to which the Minister referred at the start of her response. It may enable us to stand back and look at just how this might be approached with less agony. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 204J:
	Clause 106, page 67, line 15, after "area" insert "or who provides such services to a significant proportion of the persons resident in the area of the responsible authority"

Lord Greaves: My noble friend Lady Hamwee has just trailed this amendment, which is about the relationship between local area agreements and the health service organisations that will take part in the agreements. It addresses the Bill's provision about the location of the services provided and the fact that that is often quite different from the distribution of those using the services. The issue is sometimes fairly simple, as with local community services, but it can be quite complex for larger hospitals. The pattern is particularly complex in some large conurbations where there is a great deal of overlap. If the men in the ambulance come to get you in the part of the world where I live, the first thing they ask—assuming that you are capable of giving an answer—is, "Burnley or Airedale?". Burnley is part of the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust—although, given the recent changes, they will now ask, "Blackburn or Airedale?". But that is another matter.
	Burnley and Blackburn are in east Lancashire and Airedale is over the tops in Yorkshire, in the Aire Valley, and is clearly a different set-up altogether. But traditionally people in our end of the county go to Airedale, and that is particularly true of those parts of the county that used to be in Yorkshire. Pretty well everybody goes to Airedale. So it is a question of the interaction between investment decisions and the provision of services. Presumably those are the key things that will appear in the local area agreements, linked to targets coming out of those and the location of the places that will provide those services. It may not be the organisations—the primary care trusts and NHS trusts—that will be negotiating the local area agreement in a given area.
	A further problem is, for example, that Blackburn is not in Lancashire anyway. It is a big black hole in the middle of Lancashire, which makes a nonsense of the whole thing. Presumably the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust will have to take part in the local area agreements in the whole of Blackburn and its part of Lancashire. That is very complex. It will be interesting to know how the Government see it working in practice. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: The noble Lord is arguing that NHS trusts and foundation trusts should be named as partners for all responsible authorities in which they provide services to "a significant proportion" of residents rather than only to the responsible authorities in whose areas they have facilities. The reasoning behind the amendment is that the services provided by the trusts may indeed have catchments that go beyond local authority boundaries, as the noble Lord has explained, and some trusts would not therefore have to co-operate with the responsible local authorities in which they provide services but do not happen to have facilities. In the light of the noble Lord's comments, the debate on the previous amendment and the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that we seem to be over-complicating matters and doing a lot of things of which they do not approve, it is interesting to note that implementation of this amendment would be very complicated indeed. For reasons that I shall explain, it would have serious unintended practical consequences.
	When we added NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts to the list of partner authorities in another place in recognition of the role they play in delivering local priorities well beyond health, we made it clear that we did not wish to place on them or on the responsible local authorities any unnecessary burdens or confusions that might be brought about by the nature of many of the trusts. For that reason, we have required that only the trusts that operate a facility within the boundaries of the authority must be a partner.
	We have described this as the Great Ormond Street Hospital problem. Trusts such as Great Ormond Street deliver specialist services across the country at a regional and even national level rather than to one specific local place. We do not wish to place on Great Ormond Street a burdensome requirement to co-operate with all the responsible local authorities in the country. That is just what the amendment would do. I can see that it attempts to limit the number of responsible local authorities with which each trust must co-operate by the notion of "significant proportion", but that is too ill defined to work in practice. Great Ormond Street delivers specialist children's services across the country. Clearly children and their families will make up a "significant proportion" of residents in each area who may at some point require Great Ormond Street to provide them with specialist services. So by that definition it would have to co-operate with every responsible local authority.
	I support the notion that where the catchment area of a trust clearly goes beyond the boundary of the responsible local authority in which it has facilities, we should encourage—and we will do so in guidance—local decision makers to consider how the neighbouring authority should co-operate with it, a discretion which they enjoy through Clause 108(2)(a)(ii). As I said, we will set that out in guidance. I urge the noble Lord to think about the amendment's implications. They would be very serious for the large specialist and third-tier hospitals.

Lord Greaves: I made the Government think a little about the difficulties and that's okay. I thank the Minister for her reply, because she has been thinking about it. The big specialist hospitals—which are really regional—are one issue, and I think that that is a separate issue. It is not clear that they should be tied into the local area agreement at all. It does not seem relevant that Great Ormond Street is located within a particular London borough because it ought to be part of a wider system.
	It has just occurred to me that, next time the ambulance comes to take me away, neither of the hospitals from which I can choose—if it happens, I hope that I am sufficiently able to make that choice—is in Lancashire. Therefore, neither of them will be part of the local area agreement that will involve the two local authorities of Lancashire county council and Pendle borough council in which I reside. The system will be difficult, to put it mildly, because without the co-operation of those two hospitals any health targets, or health-related targets, in the part of Lancashire in which I live will be absolutely meaningless. There are problems. This matter ought to be thought out. It may just require more flexibility on the ground, which I have argued for throughout, and a more local approach. Having made those remarks and listened to the Minister's interesting comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 205 to 207A not moved.]

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 208:
	Clause 106, page 68, line 3, leave out sub-paragraph (i) and insert—
	"(i) the relevant Secretaries of State as determined from time to time by order of the Secretary of State with responsibility for local government."

Baroness Hamwee: My noble friend and I have added our names also to Amendments Nos. 209ZBA, 210C, 210D, 212EA and 212EB in this group. Amendments Nos. 209BA, 211 and 211C stand in the names of other Members of the Committee.
	In the last exchange, I believe that the Minister said that all partners will be equal in local area agreements. This group of amendments enables us to ask whether one partner will be more equal than others or, to put it another way, aka brick wall, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith.
	We were prompted to table Amendment No. 208 by the Local Government Association. It asks which Secretary of State will deal with various matters. I am well aware that in law there is a single Secretary of State. That is at least one complication that one does not need to face in having to define them differently in Bills. However, in pointing that out, the Minister in the Commons said that he hoped he had answered the point. I could not see that he had—the point being that the Secretary of State is not required to co-operate in drawing up agreements, although he has the power to approve or reject them. That needs to be explained if the Secretary of State is to be a partner on an equal basis with the others. The Secretary of State should not be interposed at a point somewhere down the line in the sequence of arrangements as a facilitator or a hurdle or, indeed, a block.
	Amendment No. 209ZBA draws the Committee's attention to the requirement in Clause 108 that the local authority in question has to submit the draft local area agreement to the Secretary of State when he so directs. The Secretary of State already has an order-making power under Clause 106. This morning I was rather distressed when I realised that I had not tabled an amendment to take out Clause 106(7). However, it is all part and parcel of the same argument that there is an enormous amount of prescription and that the Secretary of State's role in the Bill appears not to be as one understood it from the White Paper and other government publications.
	Amendments Nos. 210C and 210D seek to leave out subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 108, which concern the Secretary of State's directions. Therefore, the thrust of the amendments is that he or she should not make those directions. Amendments Nos. 212EA and 212EB seek to leave out similar requirements in Clause 113, which concerns revision proposals for designated targets.
	In summary, if the Secretary of State is to be a partner in the way that local authorities and many other organisations are to be partners, what can the Minister tell us which will enable us to read the Bill in a very different way from how I and my noble friends read it at present, applying common sense and an ordinary understanding of language? I beg to move.

Lord Hanningfield: My name is added to Amendment No. 208. I wish to speak also to Amendments Nos. 209BA and 211C.
	The recurring theme today revolves around devolution—decoupling central and local government to grant councils the autonomy they need and deserve to deliver efficient and high-quality services for their constituents. It is logical that the LAA should be designed in consultation with all stakeholders—partners, businesses, service users and the general public—and that it should be controlled at the local level, as we discussed. We must get over the negative connotations associated with a postcode lottery, to coin a phrase, and learn to think more intelligently. Establishing local people's priorities and providing local solutions to local problems is surely a positive concept—a postcode democracy. Too often we have witnessed micromanagement through a plethora of targets and a one-size-fits-all approach to governing at the local level. We have talked about the need for more flexibility as regards different systems across the country. The supposed safety net is surely not the solution; it demands the allocation of resources towards targets that may have little resonance with local people at the expense of delivering what really matters.
	These amendments are complementary to others tabled this afternoon and their purpose is simple—to demonstrate faith in local government, facilitate the use of discretion in policy-making and, more importantly, to give credence to the democratic process. The design and refinement of local improvement targets will therefore be absolutely reflective of the wishes of local people.
	Earlier this afternoon we discussed the list of partners that should be involved in local area agreements. I fully endorse the LGA's contention that central government should be involved as a partner. The White Paper continually refers to partnership arrangements and the Government's absence from the list denotes a dictatorial standpoint—as my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith said—directing, not participating in, the delivery of LAAs. I illustrate this point with a hypothetical example. A local improvement target could be to reduce social disorder and anti-social behaviour in an area. Clearly, the local authority would be inclined to work with the Home Office on such a matter. Indeed, a council battling the impact of climate change on a coastal area would want to engage with Defra as part of its strategy.
	The Government have waxed lyrical about the devolution agenda for some time. We have had a short debate today about devolving more. I repeat that the Bill provides an opportunity to legitimise the rhetoric and deliver truly meaningful and valuable reform to a sector crippled by targets and stifled by ring-fenced funding. These amendments are intended to enhance the legislation and, in so doing, enhance the lives of the people we represent.

Lord Smith of Leigh: I intend to withdraw my Amendment No. 211 from this group because it is substantially different in nature from the amendments that have been moved and spoken to. In doing so, I should say that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, about postcode lottery. It is a phrase that is used too often. While we should celebrate local diversity, it is clear that there should be minimum national standards.
	I have been involved in a pilot local area agreement and I can assure noble Lords that they work. It seems to me that the worries about Clause 108 are unnecessary. Remembering the process we went through, I see this as a mechanistic proposal; in other words, you do it at this time to suit everyone, and after so many years you do it again. That is the kind of arrangement I imagine will develop. It is not quite what noble Lords seem to think.

Baroness Andrews: I am grateful for my noble friend's intervention because there is a danger of making a meal of this, if I may so put it. I want to stress how much this is a negotiated process between local authorities and the regional offices representing the Secretary of State. It is interesting to note that my noble friend has degrouped an amendment that would have imposed an extra discipline on the Secretary of State, which would have been too rigid. In fact, several of the amendments seem to seek more discipline while others introduce less rigidity. It is important that I explain to noble Lords how we think this is going to work and how the Secretary of State fits in. The idea that the Secretary of State is a heavy-handed person or office which jumps into the process at some stage and either brings it to a halt or insists on how it is going to be done is not how it is going to happen. I can assure noble Lords of that and I emphasise that that is not the kind of relationship we want to create.
	I refer noble Lords to the statement of intent accompanying this part of the Bill, Cooperation of English Authorities with Local Partners. We made it clear in the other place that the new-style LAAs will be a genuine negotiation between central and local government and their partners. We are building on the local government White Paper, and recently we produced a publication called Developing the future arrangements for local area agreements. It states:
	"The negotiation will explore the extent to which the local priorities ... match central departments' views on improvement priorities and identify where compromises may be needed from both the locality and central government to strike the right central/local deal around agreed priorities for the local area".
	For the first time we are trying to evolve a set of local priorities that matches national priorities in certain respects—they are often reflected in local situations—and, of course, some local priorities are genuinely local. There may be genuine pockets of worklessness and stubborn deprivation which are not found in the district next door. But there is a set of national priorities, such as improving health and well-being, which resonate and are relevant to every local authority. It is not much more complicated than that. The publication goes on to state:
	"The 9 Government Offices will continue to represent Central Government in the negotiations with local authorities and their partners ... In doing so the Government Office will draw on its knowledge of local objectives and any tensions that are likely to arise".
	That is what the government offices do; they act as a mediator between central and local government, and they do it well. They are highly experienced, as well as being familiar with and on first name terms with most local authorities. We could have done this in other ways. We could have set out in the Bill that a draft LAA would have to be submitted to the government office at specific points in the run-up to submitting the draft to the Secretary of State. We could have prescribed that it had to be done through a set process of meetings that would have to take place. We could have built in a very prescriptive and rigid system, but we have not done so.
	I have in front of me an account of what Suffolk is doing. I shall not read it aloud, but I know that the noble Baroness will be quite interested. The processes Suffolk is working through seek to determine the conditions around partnerships and how central government departments are working together in order to identify in Whitehall the cross-cutting priorities for partnerships, not least what will make up the 200 indicators and how they can be reflected across sub-county targets. We have officers who are active partners in developing the negotiating process for the new-style LAAs, and local government representatives on the Designing New LAAs Project Board. This is a very pragmatic and honourable process, and it is not true to say that Secretaries of State will barge through all this and expect their wishes to prevail. That is to misread the nature of what we are trying to create. This is where and how we are serious about devolution.

Lord Hanningfield: The noble Baroness is saying what we want to hear, so why can the Bill not be drafted in such a way as to make us feel comfortable and secure? We have had a massive number of targets, some of them ridiculous. It can take a lot of money and effort just to achieve a small target, one that is totally unnecessary to the relevant authority. We have lost confidence. Why can some of our amendments not be included so as to facilitate what the noble Baroness is saying?

Baroness Andrews: I have not said anything about not accepting or accepting amendments. The noble Lord has asked me to explore the nature of making legislation. In this Bill we are trying to set up a framework to create a discipline so that something will happen and voluntary local area agreements will apply in every local area. The agreements will be able to deliver what local people want, aspire to and need without compromising or reducing flexibility and without creating a superstructure. That is why the Bill is framed in terms of the balance I have described.
	Amendment No. 208 is interesting and would have a significant negative consequence. It concerns the definition of "Secretary of State". Its immediate effect would be to remove Jobcentre Plus and the Highways Agency from the list of named partners. Those bodies do not have a legal status independent of the Secretary of State, which is why they are named in the Bill in terms of the Secretary of State exercising certain functions. The Secretary of State exercising his functions under Section 2 of the Employment and Training Act 1973 is in fact Jobcentre Plus. When he exercises his functions as a highway or traffic authority, he is in fact the Highways Agency. This is a conflation which is represented by the term "Secretary of State".
	I am sure we all agree that we do not want to remove these organisations, because that would not be desirable. In their place would be a power for the Secretary of State with responsibility for local government to add any other Secretary of State to the list of named partners. The outcome would be to require decisions on individual targets that are related in some way to the functions of relevant government departments to be agreed with central government from the outset. But as I have said, it is vital that those priorities are reached by the local partners themselves. It would also be unworkable because central government departments would be bound to have regard to every individual LAA target that related to them and to which they had signed up. Again, that would not make any sense. Lastly, by naming individual Secretaries of State as partnering authorities, we would be positioning individual departments as needing to agree targets unilaterally when doing so on a collective basis. That is the opposite of what noble Lords want.
	Instead, as I have explained, we have a shared set of indicators—200 not 1,200, which I know noble Lords will be pleased about—to be agreed collectively on core national priorities on an area-by-area basis, which will reflect how they are to work, and to develop that framework in a collaborative way. I am happy to confirm that important and positive steps are being taken in all these areas. The set of 200 indicators is now being negotiated across Whitehall and will be announced this autumn. We are currently running feasibility testing of the new LAA model in 17 local authority areas by means of negotiation. That is why I quoted the case in Suffolk, which is aiming to simulate the negotiation process that will be conducted for real in the autumn to identify its benefits.
	Amendments Nos. 209BA and 209ZBA deal with the arrangements for initiating an LAA. Amendment No. 209BA would allow a draft LAA to be initiated either at the direction of the Secretary of State or by the responsible local authority itself. Amendment No. 209ZBA would leave this entirely to the discretion of the responsible authority. Clause 108 allows an LAA to be initiated only by the Secretary of State. The reason for this, as with many judgments in government and in partnerships, is that there must be a clear and agreed process and a timetable by which LAAs can be negotiated and signed off. We cannot have a situation where there are competing local area agreements for the same area, one initiated by the local authority and one by the Secretary of State; we cannot have a situation where we cannot guarantee across Whitehall that an LAA will be negotiated and to a particular timetable, not least because, without such a guarantee, there is a real danger that the myriad existing performance and reporting arrangements, which we are all now trying to slim down, will spring up again by default.
	Clause 108 contains the process of negotiation which we will formally, at the direction of the Secretary of State and as a matter of practice, set out in guidance. We are developing the guidance with the LGA and we will set out the process for negotiation and the timetable for the next round of LAAs. We expect to issue that guidance as soon as possible after the announcement of CSR07, which will, in turn, confirm the approximately 200 national indicators.
	Amendments Nos. 210C and 210D are very similar. They also deal with the process for initiating LAAs but seek severely to limit the direction-making power of the Secretary of State. The House has reiterated time and again in legislation the dangers of putting too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State, and we know the nature of such debates. I understand those concerns, but subsections (5) and (6) are proportionate and necessary to make sure that these new and entirely devolutionary LAAs can be made to work.
	Amendment No. 210C would mean that, where the Secretary of State issued a direction to an authority to prepare an LAA, he could not set a date by which it had to be submitted. How much would that weaken the direction? The preparation would be open-ended and might never be concluded. Amendment No. 210D would ensure that a direction issued by the Secretary of State to prepare an LAA could not be revoked or varied; but these powers are essential because otherwise a local authority could be tied indefinitely into a set of priorities which might change. If the Secretary of State could not revoke a direction he would not be able to deal with any emergencies which might arise—flooding, for example.
	My noble friend has withdrawn his amendments so I will turn to Amendment No. 212EA, which also seeks to diminish the role of the Secretary of State. It reduces the extent to which an LAA can generally be seen as an agreement because a revision proposal would no longer have to be submitted as is provided for in Clause 113(1)(a). It would have a similar impact; it would not allow the Secretary of State to require a revision. Both amendments would compel the Secretary of State, having signed off an LAA, to live with that agreement for three years with no scope to amend. However, let us consider what might happen if a big local employer collapsed or there was an environmental disaster. You would be unable to address the situation through your LAA because there would be no scope for revision. I hope I have made myself clear on that.
	Amendment No. 211C deals with the local implications of LAAs. It seeks to ensure that responsible local authorities and partner authorities have more regard to local improvement targets in the LAA in the exercise of their functions over and above the regard that they would pay to other targets. I understand and agree that we want local improvement targets to be taken very seriously by partners, but we have to consider how that would work. I mentioned flooding as an example. It would be inappropriate for the Environment Agency or the fire authorities to be required to have more regard to LAA targets than to dealing with basic emergency situations. One needs to build in flexibility.
	I am persuaded that we have the balance right in Clause 110. The duty to have regard will ensure that authorities will have to take account of LAA targets but, if there is good reason for not doing so, they will be able to have them revised.
	I hope noble Lords are reassured by this explanation of the negotiation process—I may be being optimistic—and understand where we are coming from and what we have tried to put in place to ensure that this is successful from the local authority's point of view.

Lord Graham of Edmonton: We have been in this situation before. Many people want the responsibility for doing things but ultimately run away from putting their hands up when something goes wrong. We have all been in local government and increasingly there is a tendency to blame the Government—not government at local, district or parish level, but "the Government". I therefore see nothing wrong in this Government, whom I strongly support, being responsible but firm.
	Many people too fondly believe that the general populace is anxious to be involved in local government and local affairs. I live in Loughton, in the middle of the Epping Council area, and the noble Lords, Lord Dixon-Smith and Lord Hanningfield, know that there neither their party nor mine has a look in. That does not mean that the Liberal Democrats have it. The Loughton Ratepayers Association, which, whatever it may be underneath, is an ostensibly non-political organisation, rules the roost politically. I was active in the Enfield area when the merger took place in the 1960s. At that time, Southgate Council, with a 20,000 Conservative majority, did not have a Conservative councillor; the council consisted of councillors representing rent and rate payers' associations.
	Various devices are used by people who run under a false banner. The Government are seeking to change the system and, in so doing, to give genuine opportunities for people to combine their talents and strengths at a community level. That is a good thing, which is why I support the Government.

Baroness Hamwee: I am reassured by the Minister's image of a cuddly Secretary of State, with which she started her explanation. She commented separately on amendments which need to be read together; for example, our proposal for removing the Secretary of State's right of direction with regard to variation makes sense only if the right of direction for the original is taken out, which is what we were seeking to do.
	The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, mentioned that the statement of intent is not part of the Bill and will not be part of the Act. I do not doubt the good faith with which the Minister explained what is in the statement of intent, but we have to respond to what is on the face of the Bill, and that is what lies behind these amendments.
	The Minister gathered quite a head of steam in responding to Amendment No. 208 and told me first, secondly and thirdly why she could not accept it. I would point out, fourthly, that it has a spelling mistake in it. For that reason, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 209 not moved.]

Baroness Crawley: My Lords, I beg to move that the House be resumed. In doing so, I suggest that the Committee stage begin again not before 8.30 pm.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House resumed.

Gambling Act 2005 (Operating Licence Conditions) Regulations 2007

Lord Davies of Oldham: rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 11 June be approved.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, these are three statutory instruments of several that the Government are publishing in preparation for the implementation of the Gambling Act 2005 from 1 September 2007.
	We are making good progress. The draft measures take us a step closer to establishing a comprehensive new regulatory regime for the gambling industry which, for the first time, places the protection of children and other vulnerable people at its heart, while ensuring that responsible operators have the flexibility to remain profitable. The instruments have been drafted with the licensing objectives of the Gambling Act 2005 in mind, and those are worth repeating here. They are to keep gambling crime-free, to ensure that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way, and to protect children and the vulnerable. The three provisions deal with gaming machines, lottery machines and operating licence conditions. All three have, over the past year, been the subject of consultation with the statutory regulator, the Gambling Commission, key stakeholders from industry and organisations with an interest in problem gambling.
	The Categories of Gaming Machine Regulations define four classes of gaming machine, to be known as categories A, B, C and D. As required by the Act, the regulations also subdivide category B machines into five subcategories and make it clear, where there is a reference to category B machines in the Act, to which of those subcategories it shall be treated as referring. The new categories are defined in the draft regulations primarily by the maximum stake and prize that they may offer. That approach has worked well in the past and is well understood in the industry, and the Government continue to believe that it forms a sound basis for future policy. The proposed stake and prize levels take their cue from the hierarchy of gaming machines suggested by the Act. The Act determines which type of premises may make the different categories of gaming machine available for use depending on the nature and degree of regulation of the premises, whether the premises are established primarily for gambling, and the age of potential visitors to the premises.
	Broadly speaking, the stake and prize limits proposed here replicate those which the Government proposed alongside the draft Gambling Bill in November 2004 and which have already been implemented over the past two years under existing legislation. The Government have committed to review the stake and prize levels proposed here in 2009.
	Category A machines, with unlimited stakes and prizes, will be allowed only in the one regional casino permitted by the Act. The machines are new to this country, and it is right to take a cautious approach to their introduction. The Government made a clear commitment that we would not consider allowing other casinos to offer the machines until a proper assessment of their impact on problem gambling, based on the experience in the regional casino, had been undertaken, and that remains our firm intention.
	Category B machines may be sited in a variety of premises, including casinos, betting offices, bingo halls and adult-only arcades, as well as members' clubs and miners' welfare institutes. Stake and prize limits will range from £2 stakes and £4,000 prize money in casinos, which are subject to the highest level of regulation, to £1 stakes and £250 prize money in snooker and other commercial clubs which are established for purposes other than gambling. Category B includes what have become known as fixed-odds betting terminals in bookmakers and are also permitted in casinos, which will have a maximum stake of £100 and a maximum prize of £500. Those machines are relatively new to the British market, and they will be regulated as gaming machines for the first time from 1 September. The Government will continue to keep the machines under close scrutiny and, if it becomes clear that they are becoming a particular source of problem gambling, we have powers in the Act to control them, which we will not hesitate to use.
	Category C machines, which will be permitted in pubs and in the adult-only areas of seaside arcades, will have a maximum stake of 50p and prize of £35. Category D machines will be the only machines which children will be permitted to play. They include crane grabs and penny falls, which it is generally accepted cause no harm to children, and the lowest stake and prize fruit machines, commonly found at seaside arcades and travelling fairs. It is because children are permitted to play those machines that we have proposed to reduce the maximum stake on all cash category D machines from 30p currently to 10p from 1 September.
	I understand the concern of noble Lords on all sides of the House about the potential impact of allowing children to play gaming machines of any kind, which was the subject of considerable debate during the passage of the Bill through Parliament. The Government made it clear during the passage of the Bill that they did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to justify a ban at this stage. However, we will watch things carefully after 1 September. The Government have a reserve power to make it an offence for a child or young person below a specified age to use a category D machine, and there will be no hesitation in using that power if the evidence justifies it.
	It is also important to note that the regulations are just one part of the range of measures that are being putting in place to ensure that players of gaming machines are properly protected. For the first time, it will be a specific criminal offence to permit a child to use gaming machines, other than category D machines. The Government have already prevented any further applications for gaming machines in takeaway food shops, taxi offices and other non-gambling premises. That will see the removal of such opportunities for ambient gambling in some 6,000 premises by 2009. Following extensive consultation with the industry and with problem gambling groups, the Government will shortly introduce regulations under Section 240, which will control key aspects of how gaming machines are used. They will include new requirements for machines to display information about where customers can get help and support for gambling problems and limits on how much money may be deposited in a machine.
	The regulations will be complemented by the Gambling Commission's technical standards for manufacture, which will limit speed of play and ensure that machines offered in this country will meet the strictest international standards. The Gambling Commission will also ensure that all gambling operators have in place procedures and policies to ensure proper supervision of machines, and to identify and support problem gamblers. Taken together, this will mean that we have in place one of the most robust systems of regulation for gaming machines anywhere in the world.
	On the second instrument, the definition of a gaming machine included in the Act is deliberately wide. One exemption from the definition is made for machines that dispense a lottery ticket or otherwise allow a person to enter a lottery. The order specifies the minimum amount of time that must lapse between the purchase of a lottery ticket from a machine and the announcement of the result by the machine, if it is to be exempted. If no minimum time lag were imposed, there is a risk that operators would develop machines that enabled customers to enter a virtual lottery which, to the player, would be all but indistinguishable from a gaming machine.
	That is exactly what has happened under the existing legislation. Manufacturers have developed lottery machines for members' clubs which bear all the characteristics of gaming machines, with none of the protections, and which have been able to offer prizes as large as £2,000. Only gaming machines in casinos are permitted to offer prizes at that level. This is an abuse, and a one-hour interval will ensure that this cannot happen again in the future, while allowing charities and other good causes for the first time to raise more funds by selling tickets by machine.
	Finally, while there should be no apology for forcing the removal of lottery machines from clubs, the Government recognise that the machines have offered an important source of revenue for working men's clubs and miners' welfare institutes. To assist clubs in that position, we have proposed to introduce, with their support, the new category B3A gaming machine included in the Categories of Gaming Machine Regulations.
	The Gambling Act 2005 (Operating Licence Conditions) Regulations 2007 impose mandatory operating licence conditions on casinos and bingo halls. In the case of casinos, the regulations deal with another form of equipment exempted from the gaming machine definition: wholly automated gaming tables. The regulations require that a minimum of four player positions be offered for each wholly automated gaming table. Wholly automated roulette is typical of this sort of game. A real roulette wheel spins automatically at regular intervals and is connected to electronic terminals on which customers place their bets. Wholly automated gaming tables were granted an exemption from the general gaming machine definition included in the Act, because the Government accepted that this equipment, which may be provided only in casinos—I emphasise that—merely provided an automated means of playing a real casino game.
	These games will be regulated along broadly similar lines to the real version of the game: they will not be subject to any statutory stake and prize limits, the equipment must comply with strict technical specifications which the Gambling Commission will set, and operators must have in place strict monitoring policies and procedures to ensure that customers are protected. The proposal to require a minimum number of player positions is needed to prevent the development of wholly automated casino games for one or very few people, which would be indistinguishable from unlimited stake and prize gaming machines. This would risk undermining the justification for exempting this equipment from the gaming machine definition in the first place.
	The regulations would impose monetary limits on any prize gaming that bingo halls wished to offer, unless it was prize bingo. Prize bingo is not subject to these controls because bingo halls will be able to offer all types of bingo under the new Act without monetary limits. Therefore, these regulations concern only prize games of other sorts played on bingo premises. Prize gaming is one of the less known and less used permissions under the Gambling Act 2005. Prize gaming was originally permitted in bingo halls as a low-stake form of amusement between what is known in the industry as main game bingo. The Government are determined that this form of gaming should remain at a low level.
	The strict monetary limits in the current legislation have worked well in terms of controlling any potential harmful effects, and the new limits that we propose will ensure that these safeguards are maintained. During consultations, the Government listened carefully to representations from the Bingo Association that some differential treatment may be possible for adult-only premises offering prize gaming, without prejudicing the intention that prize gaming must remain at a low level. We have therefore decided to allow bingo halls, but strictly only those which do not allow under-18s to enter the premises, to offer a maximum cash prize of £50, which is double the present level. Separate regulations will impose limits on prize gaming in arcades and other venues permitted to offer this form of gaming.
	I commend all three statutory instruments to the House. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 11 June be approved. 20th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee.—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)

Lord James of Blackheath: My Lords, I commence with four expressions of regret. The first is to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, personally, because the poor noble Lord has already had enough of me for one day before he entered into this Chamber tonight. That he should get a second instalment this evening is a matter of regret. Secondly, I regret that this debate coincides precisely with the annual dinner of the all-party racing committee, which has rather depleted the resources of those who know much about the subject and who might otherwise have been here, instead of giving preference to their dinner. Thirdly, I regret that I made a mistake in declaring my personal interests in the Grand Committee last week, because it has been pointed out by a hawk-eyed analyst that I forgot to mention that I undertook the initial valuation of the value of the Tote on behalf of the Jockey Club. I apologise for that omission. My final regret is that we are not having an opportunity to debate all six instruments relating to the Gambling Act 2005 as an entity, because they hang together as one package. Taking them separately diminishes the strength of our argument.
	In Grand Committee, we had a clear view that we were talking about instruments that had two primary purposes. The first was to overcome the problems that would result during Recess in the event that the Gambling Act came into force, because at the moment there is no legitimacy beyond 1 or 3 September for the continuity of the Tote, unless its licence to trade as an exclusive pool-betting arrangement is allowed to continue. Secondly, the levy must be reinstated if it is to have any means of supporting the economic vitality of racing in this country. We recognise that racing carries a total employment of between 150,000 and 200,000 people, and is therefore vital to the rural communities of this country.
	The instruments before this House simply do not do the job and they are not, as they stand, a package which will do what the Government believe, expect and want of them.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord spoke on the order and regulations for something like 15 minutes in Grand Committee. I have a proposition to put to him. If he does not repeat his speech, I shall not repeat mine. At the moment, he appears to be speaking about something quite different which is nothing to do with these instruments—the Tote. But if he proposes to repeat what he said last week, when I thought that he talked himself out, would that not be a great pity?

Lord James of Blackheath: My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord's comment. However, I have read the Hansard account of what was said last week and I found a number of major errors committed by all of us—myself included. It would be welcome if they were corrected, because they go to core of what is to happen.
	I am not here to talk about the Tote. I have tried to exclude myself from that altogether, but one or two comments were made in error last week. Two of them relate to the Tote. The first—

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we are not debating the Tote this evening. I must ask the noble Lord, on behalf of the whole House, that we debate these instruments, not issues that are not contained in them.

Lord James of Blackheath: My Lords, the noble Lord emphasises the point that concerns me, which is that the instruments should have been taken as an entity to allow them all to be interrelated. However, I shall take the admonition that we should not now refer to the Tote at all. However, let us deal with my concerns on the instruments as they stand. First, I do not believe that they do the job expected of them by the DCMS in this instance. The repeat capacity of the ability of anyone playing a FOBT—a fixed-odds betting terminal—to increase the value of his stake by the repeated pressure of one touch pad has not been addressed by any statement to show how that will be controlled to fulfil what the instrument actually states.
	Secondly, the statements that have been given in response to the Merits Committee on the control of so-called cartoon racing have not brought them within a clear definition of a FOBT, because there is still no explanation as to how that overcomes the fact that the race itself is separated from the betting medium. That is an outrageous means by which the bookmaker is able to control not only, perhaps, the outcome, but the value of the price returned for any horse deemed to be the winner. I do not accept the assurances given in written answers to the Merits Committee that a process is in place to police that. I would want to see the DCMS insisting upon and obtaining audited information to show that there is a systems audit that demonstrates the fairness of that system. It is not a FOBT, because there will always be a separation of betting from the screen. I cannot accept that there is a weighting of prices derived on the prices being offered from the money being bet on the screen, because I do not see that that is how the betting takes place. That issue is very serious.
	My final point on these machines concerns the levy, which I hope I will be forgiven for mentioning, because it is an important part of this matter. All of this is part of a progressive downwards pressure on the process of bookmaker profit being taken into account for the calculation of the levy—certainly in response to the Lord Donovan Commission. The Government have let the toothpaste out of the tube regarding the whole area of bookmakers' control of what goes on in betting shops and this has taken the bookmakers' claim of an appropriate levy down from the £110 million mark to around £90 million. They have done so by upturning what, over the years, has been a traditional arrangement under which all betting, of whatever type, was included in the levy calculation, including foreign betting. All that is out of the present equation and I believe that, as they reactivate the levy, the Government should be looking to return the levy calculation to the original basis on which it was formed some 20 years ago. Those are important points to which the Government should return.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord James. I promised not to repeat my speech and I shall not do so. However, I hope that, in replying, the Minister will make it clear that the details of what was an agreement between the Association of British Bookmakers and the Government in 2004 will exist until 31 August this year and that, from 1 September, the Gambling Commission will control how fixed-odds betting terminals can operate. At that time, the Secretary of State made it clear that these terminals were on probation, and I hope that the Minister will make it clear in his reply that that is still the case.

Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, from the discussion that we have just heard, it is clear that there is more history to this matter than I had thought. Looking back to the passage of the Bill and the discussions leading up to it, which the Minister will remember only too well, some of the most contentious issues involving many different interests across the industry were machine categories, prize money and so on. Speaking for these Benches, with one or two exceptions, to which I shall come, I think that the Government have taken a relatively cautious approach to these orders and, in the circumstances, have put forward a reasonably balanced set of proposals.
	I can well understand the slight frustration of the noble Lord, Lord James, at the orders being taken piecemeal. The Minister in the other place confirmed that another 14 orders are due to be tabled in the next month, so no doubt we will be in for a treat when we return in October. In a sense, it is to be regretted that all the drafting did not take place at the same time, and the Section 240 regulations, in particular, should be seen in that context.
	In contrast to the noble Lord, Lord James, and like the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, I take some comfort from the assurances that have been given about the review of the operation of FOBTs by the Gambling Commission, which will take place in due course. As the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, confirmed, the Gambling Commission should be the body that carries out that review, and it needs a period of time to see how FOBTs are operating. The whole purpose of that part of the Bill was to bring FOBTs within a proper form of regulation, and that is one of the beneficial aspects of what is now the Act.
	I also particularly welcome what the regulations have to say about category D machines, which we debated during the Committee and Report stages of the Bill. We were firmly of the view that this kind of very limited type of machine should be available and we are pleased to see that the regulations enshrine that in a limited form. I know that this is somewhat controversial and that the BCA does not necessarily welcome it but we are pleased with the proposals on wholly automated gaming tables and the minimum number of players set by the Government.
	However, there are some aspects of the regulations on which I should like to press the Minister for further and better particulars. The issue of the B3A machines is extraordinary. Clearly, there was a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing on the consultation, but including a special category for working men's clubs and members-only social clubs is somewhat extraordinary. I heard the Minister say that the proceeds go to charity and so on, but are these machines really that much safer without the interval in private clubs? In fact, children are more likely to be in private clubs than they are to be in commercial premises, so I am not sure that his arguments stand up.
	On a more general point, is there sufficient time to reconfigure the machines by 1 September? I understand that some 300,000 machines may have to be reconfigured, and I should be interested to hear the Minister's comments on that. After all, especially if we are to hear from Brussels about the interval point only at the end of August, the industry will have rather a short time in which to adjust to these regulations.
	The fact that the Section 240 regulations will not be available until a few weeks' time, when the cost of labelling has been estimated at some £3 million, also seems to put the industry at a disadvantage. We do not have a compliance cost assessment for a future set of regulations, but I should be very interested to hear whether the Minister agrees that the labelling process will cost some £3 million.
	I turn to the subject of the operating licence conditions. No doubt the Minister read the debate in the other place on the report of the delegated powers sub-committee, but he will be only too aware of the problems facing the bingo industry, including the problem of prize-gaming levels. It voluntarily accepted the smoking ban but that will create some economic problems. Can the Minister envisage any review mechanism to raise the prizes which are being set in these regulations?
	The Minister in the other place stonewalled, as he had to, being a spokesman for culture, media and sport, but I hope that the Treasury will read these proceedings because one big issue for the bingo industry is VAT on participation fees. That puts it at a disadvantage compared with almost every other section of the industry. We on these Benches would be extremely grateful if the Minister could comment on that.
	With those exceptions, I think that the Government are putting forward a fair package of proposals.

Lord Howard of Rising: My Lords, the last time the Minister and I debated gambling orders, I urged the House to support Her Majesty's Government's position. The result was that, only for the third time since the War, an order was overturned in the House of Lords.
	I do not suppose that the same thing will happen today, although, in view of the Government's increasingly sensible gambling policy, the best thing would be for these orders to be withdrawn to give time for yet more common sense to be introduced. In the mean time, there are important things in the orders that need to be addressed, as my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath pointed out during a recent debate and as the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord McIntosh, pointed out this evening.
	I also urge the Minister to listen to what my honourable friends Anne Milton and John Greenway said in another place. They condemned the curious situation of existing casino licence holders being allowed only 20 gaming machines but new licence holders, subject to the number of tables, being permitted to have 80. Over two years ago, the justification given for this by Her Majesty's Government was the need to proceed cautiously. No one would quibble with that wish—indeed, we would support it—but it seems odd that casinos that have been in existence for some time, have been regulated and not found wanting, should not be given the same allocation as new and unproven arrivals to the industry. Existing licence holders may, of course, apply for the new licences, but that would be coincidental. The situation is still anomalous.
	Earlier today, a Statement in another place pointed out that in September the Gambling Commission will publish the outcome of its prevalence study. I hope the Minister will look at that and, if necessary, react promptly to its findings rather than wait for the 2009 review.

Lord Bilston: My Lords, the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, was quite selective about the needs of bingo halls, but he also raised questions about the needs of working men's clubs. It is not just about working men's clubs but also about Liberal clubs, Conservative clubs and all kinds of clubs that are private members' clubs which will be helped by these regulations. I hope that the House recognises that over the past few years working men's clubs have suffered considerably, very often because of legislation passed here and in the other place, and which is now on the statute book. That has caused considerable difficulties for working men's clubs and other clubs. This is an attempt to help clubs to get through what is a very difficult trading period. Throughout the country, we have seen many clubs close because of the great difficulty, in today's competitive climate, of meeting the needs of their members.
	I repeat that such clubs are private members' clubs and mention was made of children playing on the machines. In such clubs, children are well supervised and the clubs are well structured and well-run. It is the responsibility of committee men and women in all such institutions to ensure that children do not take advantage of what happens in other areas; for example, in bingo halls where abuse does take place. I urge the House to support the regulations because we will be giving working men's clubs a useful uplift at a time when they are in desperate need of the help that we can give them by passing these regulations.

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, perhaps the House will forgive me if I start at the end. I am grateful to my noble friend for putting forward a constructive perspective with regard to clubs. I am also grateful to him for reminding the House that we are talking about all private clubs—Conservative and Liberal clubs as well as working men's clubs and miners' clubs. He was right to emphasise that the lift given will affect all clubs; they will benefit from the new regulations.
	I understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord James. He would have preferred us to take all six instruments together. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, hinted, we have many more regulations to put before the House to implement the very complex Gambling Act. These regulations are being prepared against the background of the Act coming into force on 1 September.
	I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord James, will be able to draw a skein of consistent thought through all the instruments and would wish to debate them all. Their management is quite difficult, particularly as there are more likely to be divisions on instruments in another place rather than here. Consequently, putting so many together would raise very real problems. We have tried to group them together under the subject matters that they cover.
	As the noble Lord exemplified last week, the issue of the gaming machines in bookmakers has a potential impact on the levy. I understand his point on that but we hope it will be limited. Those gaming machines are not quite as extensive in their impact as he suggested. I hope he will forgive me for not retracing the whole debate that we had last week on those three orders. I am not sure I would win many friends in the House if I did that.
	The noble Lord, Lord James, emphasised one dimension, which is cartoon racing. We have no evidence at the moment that that is a problem, and I assure the House that the Gambling Commission has the powers to act if it becomes clear that it is one. Of course, the Government have set out to legislate as comprehensively and as accurately as possible. These instruments are designed precisely to tackle certain aspects and to give effect, in detail, to the legislation that we passed two years ago. However, it will also be appreciated that there may be areas that we have not covered with sufficient rigour.
	The noble Lord, Lord James, was keen to emphasise that some developments in gambling show ingenuity that surpasses even legislators who try to conceive of problems. The only reassurance I can give him—it is a real reassurance—is that the Gambling Commission has the powers to act when it identifies an issue. It has been set up within the framework of an Act and it operates against an Act whose prime objective is the protection of vulnerable people—children—from gambling, but it is expected that there will be some abuses. Techniques and technologies will be developed that have not yet been identified. If they become an abuse, the Gambling Commission has the power to act and will not hesitate to do so. We have a broad framework of legislation and the right instruments to guarantee that, however ingenious and fertile the minds are of those who want to separate gamblers from their money, the Gambling Commission is in a position to respond to that positively.
	The noble Lord, Lord James, also said that there is no control over the maximum stake on category B2 machines, but there is. There is a £100 limit and no scope to breach that limit. I hear what he says about the punter getting round that, as can those offering the machines as regards the frequency with which the bets are laid. We shall ensure, with other regulations, that a stake up to that maximum may be made only in tranches of up to £10. We have a regulation in mind that will control the amount a punter is likely to apply. The noble Lord will have a chance to look at the regulations when they come before the House in due course. I assure him that the Government have anticipated potential developments in this area and identified one or two to which we shall respond.
	I can reassure my noble friend Lord McIntosh, who has had to leave the Chamber. I know it is the custom of the House not to reply to someone who is not present, but my noble friend had immense responsibility for the Gambling Act and he is an authority in this House. Therefore, when he raises questions I take them very seriously, even if he will only see the answers in Hansard tomorrow. I emphasise to him that the voluntary code certainly applies up to 31 August. From 1 September, the Gambling Act will be in place of the voluntary code so that we move into full legislative rigour at that time. He also asked whether fixed-odds betting terminals were on probation and whether there were issues with them. Certainly so; we are aware that they potentially present a real problem. If it becomes clear that there are abuses, we will not hesitate to act. The noble Lord, Lord James, has done the House a service. He is not the only one. During the passage of the Gambling Act we had discussions on these issues. Certain aspects of fixed-odds betting raise these problems, and he is quite right to emphasise them as he did last time we met on statutory instruments. I assure him that we expect the Gambling Commission to act if problems become acute.
	The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, lamented the delay in laying Section 240 regulations and the uncertainty for operators. The regulations are being finalised, following extensive consultation with the industry. The overwhelming majority of existing machines are not going to require a great deal of adaptation to be fully compliant with Section 240. It is possible to exaggerate the difficulty for the industry but, where some adaptation is necessary to comply with the regulations, we are building in lead times which the industry has on the whole accepted. We ought not to be too anxious about that.
	The noble Lord also raised the question of the B3A machines, the special category for clubs. The whole point about the special category B3A is borne in mind in the contribution of my noble friend Lord Bilston, which mirrors representation we have received from across the country. We want to enable clubs legitimately to raise funds, while removing what were effectively unregulated gaming machines which could have prizes as large as £2,000. That gives rise to risk because, as has been freely acknowledged in the House this evening, such clubs have wide access for the public, including children, so it is right that we address those issues.
	On the broader issue of the bingo industry, I recognise the representations. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, emphasised his anxieties. We have already allowed bingo clubs to play prize bingo without limit from 1 September. On the other limits, there will be review opportunities in due course, so I assure him that we will watch the position. Of course, the bingo industry has a substantial record and history of giving broad and innocent amusement to large numbers of our fellow citizens. As long as it is within bounds—again, there is a great deal of open access to bingo—and operates within the regulations that we have established, it will continue to be a benign form of entertainment.
	Bingo halls are, of course, freed of some regulations. They are no longer required to operate as members' clubs. We have doubled the maximum stake permitted in the jackpot gaming machines in bingo halls up to £1 from 1 August. We are allowing rollovers so that there is potential for higher prizes. Of course, the 24-hour rule has gone, so you can join a bingo club without having wait for what people always assure me is an interminable 24 hours. We were always told that was an enormous deterrent because people only went to bingo halls on the expectation of instant gratification that very evening. That being so, we have remedied that grievance as identified.
	The noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, gave his broad support, as did the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench. I am grateful for that. I bear in mind that the last time the noble Lord, Lord Howard, gave the Government his wholehearted support—on the regional casinos—we did not do so well. That story still runs, and I indicate to the House that there has been a statement on the question of regeneration other than regional casino-driven regeneration possibilities. We will debate that within a different framework.
	I shall resist the noble Lord, Lord Howard, drawing me anywhere near Treasury matters. I have enough problems dealing with the Treasury when the issue is quite specific to that august institution. This evening, I am speaking on behalf of the DCMS, and sufficient unto the day is that particular burden thereof.
	We have doubled the number of gaming machines to which existing casinos are entitled from 10 to 20. Existing operators will of course be free to apply for the new licences created by this Act. They have not been discriminated against, but feel the hot breath of competition from potential new casinos. A large number of existing casinos have fared tolerably well in recent years, and we have no reason to expect them to do anything but prosper within the strict regulations of the Act. I reiterate that the Act has the prime purposes of, first, creating an environment of regulation which we have not had since the 1960s—the Act was hopelessly out of date on new developments—and, secondly, to guarantee that gambling is carried out with proper regard to the protection of children and vulnerable adults, to keep gambling as an enjoyable pursuit which does not do social harm.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Gambling Act 2005 (Lottery Machine Interval) Order 2007

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 11 June be approved. 20th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee.—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)
	On Question, Motion agreed to.

Categories of Gaming Machine Regulations 2007

Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 12 June be approved. 20th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee.—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)
	On Question, Motion agreed to.

Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.30 pm.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	[The Sitting was suspended from 8.18 to 8.30 pm.]

Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

House again in Committee on Clause 106.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: moved Amendment No. 209ZA:
	Clause 106, page 68, line 35, after "it" insert "and in doing so shall have regard to the European Charter of Local Self-Government"

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: The most entertaining moments of the Bill have been watching a succession of new chairmen attempt to negotiate the new chair.
	Amendment No. 209ZA relates to the non-ratification of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. The charter provides that the powers of local government should be recognised in legislation and that they should be based on the proposition that all local authorities should manage a substantial proportion of public affairs in the interests of the local population. When in Opposition the Labour Party was always in favour of signing up to the charter, but in the 10 years that have elapsed the Government have failed to do so. Can the Minister tell the Committee what the thinking of the Government on the charter is? Have any discussions taken place with interested parties, such as the LGA? During the debate on the Bill in the Public Bill Committee in another place on 8 March, Mr Woolas said that he strongly supported the principles behind the charter. If that is the case, why have the Government not felt it possible to incorporate it into the Bill? When I was re-reading the charter, I wondered whether I had answered my own question, because Article 9 states:
	"Local authorities shall be entitled, within national economic policy, to adequate financial resources of their own, of which they may dispose freely within the framework of their powers".
	and,
	"Local authorities' financial resources shall be commensurate with the responsibilities provided for by the constitution and the law".
	I wonder whether those two financial clauses caused such reluctance on the part of the Government. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: The direction of the noble Baroness's amendment has taken me slightly by surprise. The Government signed the European Charter of Local Self-Government on 3 June 1997 and it was ratified on 24 April 1998. I am not sure that it would add anything to incorporate it in the Bill. However, I will read what the noble Baroness said and take advice. If I can answer her, I will write to her.
	The amendment would require the Secretary of State, when wishing to use the order-making power in Clause 106(7) to add or remove functions of the Secretary of State from the list of named partners, to have regard to the European charter.
	Clause 106(7) has been drafted in the way it has because the statutory basis of certain local service providers is a function of the Secretary of State. In an earlier amendment we gave the example of Jobcentre Plus as an agency created to fulfil a function of the Secretary of State.
	Other local or regional agencies may be created that use a similar "Secretary of State" formulation that is very useful. We may need in some instances to remove the present references to a Secretary of State's functions if, for example, Jobcentre Plus were established with its own independent legal status. Before making such an order under Clause 106(7), the Secretary of State is required under Clause 106(8) to ensure that representatives of local government and other appropriate persons would be consulted. That approach is very much in the spirit of the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
	I am afraid that the amendments do not make sense. I understand the noble Baroness's broad political point about incorporation, and will write to her on that.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I raised the amendment precisely to make the point about incorporation. The charter was ratified but it has never been incorporated into domestic legislation as it has in other European states. I was simply trying to use this opportunity to probe whether the Government had any intention of incorporating it into domestic legislation, or, indeed, whether any discussions had taken place. I will wait to hear from the noble Baroness in writing and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 106 agreed to.
	Clause 107 ["Local improvement targets": interpretation]:

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 209ZB:
	Clause 107, page 69, line 1, leave out paragraph (c)

Baroness Hamwee: I will speak also to Amendment No. 209AA. This amendment would delete paragraph (c) of Clause 107(1), which talks about targets relating to,
	"one or more other persons acting, or having functions exercisable, in the area of the responsible local authority".
	I applaud the recognition of the potentially wide role of "other persons". However, I am not entirely clear where the boundary lies on the targets to impose a duty on local authorities and their partners. When partners outside the local authorities are brought in, what duties are imposed on them? The amendment simply asks for an explanation of that paragraph.
	Amendment No. 209AA relates to subsection (3) of Clause 107, where we are told that a target,
	"relates to a person other than the responsible local authority if—
	(a) the exercise by the person of ... his functions ... could contribute to the attainment of the target".
	I seek to understand who "a person" is for this purpose, particularly whether a person under this paragraph includes a partner authority, or another partner, to put it another way. This is again a wide provision. Almost anything could contribute to the attainment of a target.
	We talked before the dinner break about what we on these Benches see as the danger of an enormous amount of paperwork not the contrary, which is what we should be expecting. This is one of those Bills where the more one reads it, the more puzzled one becomes about certain provisions. Indeed, as other people speak to it, one sees new implications. That is probably the definition of classic literature, although I would not class the Bill as that. My noble friend says that it is a work of fiction. I see more and more puzzles in this, and I hope that the Minister can help me. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: I shall certainly try to help the noble Baroness. Clause 107(1)(c) is drafted very broadly because it must cover the broad range of providers of public services outside the list of named partners in Clause 106. By definition, therefore, it includes voluntary, community and private sectors. It permits these sectors to sign up to targets in the local area agreement which they can help to deliver. That, in a nutshell, is what the partnership with these other bodies will seek to deliver. As we said in the local government White Paper, in order to deliver the ambitions set out in it, local authorities will be required to work not only with other statutory bodies but with the third sector. We could just as easily have said that about the private sector as well.
	I need tell no one in this Chamber—we will have opportunities to develop this theme—how pivotal the role of charities, the third sector and businesses is across the field, whether we are talking about health, education or housing. The richness and diversity of the voluntary sector lies in the way in which we deliver as effectively as possible in so many areas. It would make absolutely no sense to leave them out in any way if they were not positively held to be important partners. A major employer might wish to sign up to the targets in a local area agreement that reflect corporate social responsibility in volunteering or in reducing waste. Housing developers may want to sign up to affordable housing targets. Churches or other community groups may sign up to youth improvement schemes or looking after the elderly. When we talk about signing up, we include voluntary sector partners in the local strategic partnerships who have a very important iterative role in articulating not only their ambitions for the area but how they will contribute, talking through the targets as they are derived from the whole business of negotiation.
	The effect of this amendment would be that a local improvement target could never relate to a person other than a named partner, and so could not relate to a charity or other not-for-profit organisation or to a local business. Such organisations could not sign up to a local improvement target, so the amendment would prevent the recognition that we need. I am sure that the noble Baroness would not want that. We will discuss how those organisations will be involved when we discuss a later group of amendments. To reiterate, if local partnerships are to succeed, they must include representatives of the local voluntary and community sector bodies and local business. That will be made very clear. By that we mean not only the large, powerful charitable organisations but the little, nimble ones across the country that are doing essential work in some of the interstices of local areas.
	On Amendment No. 209AA, Clause 107(3)(b) seeks to ensure that a person to whom a target relates has given consent. This enables that target to be included in the local area agreement. The noble Baroness asked what the term "person" covers. It covers partner authorities, as one can see from Clause 106, which sets out who the named partners are. Clause 106(1) refers to the persons set out in the rest of Clause 106. I hope that that will help the noble Baroness and that she will be able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee: Yes, I will do that. We will come to some of this later, but I question whether the third sector, as distinct from the activity relating to the third sector, should be subject to a target. All of this comes back to targets. I still have not quite got my head around whether this imposes a duty on the third sector. On the second of my amendments, we have just heard that, because the third sector is not a partner under Clause 106, its consent to a target is not required. I think that I heard the noble Baroness say that. I am trying to piece this together.

Baroness Andrews: The third sector could be involved in formulating a target as a contributor—I am thinking on my feet. If we take for example a target to reduce drug addiction, some of the key representatives of the work would be local voluntary drugs organisations. The target would be to reduce drug addiction by 10 per cent. The local drugs voluntary sector would commit to saying, "Yes, that is a sensible target, which we think collectively we can reach. Our contribution to that target and our activity would be to provide treatment for a further 1,000 cases a year". That is how it would relate. If local voluntary drugs organisations did not think that the target was achievable, I am sure that they would work with the other partners to make a sensible and achievable target.

Baroness Hamwee: That is obviously the right way to go about the work. My concern is the implications of this Bill. Are there any sanctions against the voluntary sector if it does not do its bit? What happens to the whole target if the voluntary sector fails?

Baroness Andrews: We cannot put a duty on the voluntary sector. The aim is simply to get it to sign up, to commit and to do its best to make its contribution in relation to the ambition set in the local area agreement.

Baroness Hamwee: I am glad to hear that. No doubt there would be implications because the voluntary sector is funded to a considerable extent at a local level by local authorities. To pursue the point one stage further, the voluntary sector may say, "We believe that this is what we can do to contribute to dealing with drug addiction", but the voluntary sector, particularly voluntary organisations, then may be unable to deliver because it was overoptimistic—we are not in the business of casting blame at this moment—and overambitious. In that case, the local authority and other formal partners would be unable to meet the overall target because the voluntary sector, which is not a partner, had not been able to do its bit. What would be the knock-on effects for everyone else involved?

Baroness Andrews: One has to be common-sensical about this. The voluntary sector will contract with the local authority to deliver a certain amount of services. If it is unable to do that because it lacks capacity or whatever and was contributing such a significant amount that the target is put in jeopardy, the local authority will be able to do a number of things, such as contracting with another element of the voluntary sector. If it turns out that targets are too ambitious, local targets can be revised, which is within the scope of the arrangement.

Baroness Hamwee: I am sure that we will return to this because that raises again the question of the Secretary of State's role in setting the target and, as I have said before, the fact that money so often follows the target. I have certainly given myself enough to think about for the next stage. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 209A:
	Clause 107, page 69, line 2, at end insert—
	"(1A) In this Chapter "national improvement target" means a national target for improvement designated by the Secretary of State in respect of which there shall be a maximum number of 35."

Baroness Hanham: Many of your Lordships will remember how positively received the idea of setting an upper limit on improvement targets was when it was originally floated in the White Paper. I think the upper limit there was, as in my amendment, 35. Virtually everyone, including local authorities, the LGA and Unlock Democracy, welcomed that proposal. Their commentary was approving. Subsequently the implication has been that that number is likely to be the upper limit, but thus far the intention has not been formalised in the Bill. Our discussions earlier today suggest that the fewer government targets the better, so that there were not so many, but if 35 was what was mentioned, 35 is what we believe it ought to be at present. We listened very carefully about lessening the regulatory burden and entrusting councils with delivering on their objectives but, until issues such as the question of targets are cleared up or formalised within the legislation, none of us will quite believe that this will happen.
	In the past the requirement to meet central targets has proved to be hugely costly, and in many cases has diverted resources away from areas that are of more concern to local people. The more targets there are, the less flexibility there is within the system for providing services. We must try to ensure that there is an upper limit on the Government's intervention in this matter. That is the burden of the amendment. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: The amendment raises an important question. I shall demonstrate the distinction between designated targets and local targets, because that will help as we come on to talk about later amendments. The draft LAA will be composed of local improvement targets that have been agreed by the responsible authority and the named partners following negotiation with each other—not set by the Secretary of State, as the noble Baroness Hamwee, said on a previous amendment. That negotiation will be informed by local plans, particularly the sustainable community strategy; it might be a lengthy negotiation, but it will be thorough. Around the table, those local priorities will have been identified.
	Within that process, some local targets will be identified that are drawn from the core national policy priorities, as identified in the bank of 200 indicators. Those are the designated targets, and they carry different processes with them. They are set against national policy priorities, against which every area will have to report. One of those 200 indicators might be reducing worklessness. Against that, the local authority will have to look at how, in relation to that national target, it can deal with its own local problems.
	In those 35 targets, the national policy priorities posit a framework against which local areas will have to report, and which will cover everything the local authority delivers on its own or in partnership. When the draft LAA is submitted to the Secretary of State—with those negotiated targets—via the government office, the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Government, will formally designate the targets that are drawn from the national indicator set. That will not be a surprise at all to the LAA partners, because the indicator set will be made public this autumn. As the process for negotiating the local improvement targets as a whole goes through, everyone will be well aware of what the key national priorities are, and will therefore be able to make a judgment about how those priorities will be refracted in the local area so that they will be of paramount importance in the negotiation.
	The local improvement targets within the LAA are not designated. They are not critical from a national point of view, but they will obviously be very important locally if one of the targets is, for example, to reduce a particular type of anti-social behaviour. Achieving that, however, will be a local priority. Such targets will obviously remain important to the LAA. The designated targets and the local targets are of equal weight in terms of the local area. Therefore, the named parties remain under a duty to have regard to them. However, those targets can be amended without reference to the Secretary of State; they will not be reported on to central government; they belong to and will be discharged by the local authority. There can be as many of them as the local authority wants.
	Designated targets refer to those targets within an approved LAA which are negotiated and are of both national and local interest. However, it would be inappropriate to establish in the Bill an upper limit to the number of designated targets. We want the Bill to establish a sustainable and flexible framework for agreeing priorities in a locality. We have tried to make the process as flexible and responsive as possible. Putting an upper limit in legislation would be restrictive and arbitrary.
	However, there is no doubt that we are committed to the radical reduction of targets. We want to see indicators coming down from 1,200 to 200. The LAA will be the only place in future where central government will agree targets with local authorities. There will be no other processes outside that. We also remain committed to the principle of ensuring that, where agencies and partners need to collaborate, they work towards shared targets as opposed to the present situation, where individual targets are often set separately and in conflict.
	While I understood what the noble Baroness said, we believe that around 35 is a sensible number and that this issue is best dealt with in the statutory guidance. We have already said in the document, Developing the future arrangements for Local Area Agreements, that we expect LAAs to contain up 35 improvement targets and 18 statutory early-years/education targets. I am happy to state on the record that we will reiterate that upper limit in the guidance for the next round of LAAs. I hope that that will reassure the noble Baroness.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply. We need the figure 35 somewhere in writing. If the Minister says that 35 targets being the upper limit will be in guidance, that is perhaps acceptable on the basis that it could then be adjusted downwards at a later stage, whereas it might be more difficult if it were in the Bill. On the basis of the Minister's assurance that it will be in guidance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 209AA not moved.]
	[Amendment No. 209B had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
	Clause 107 agreed to.
	Clause 108 [Duty to prepare and submit draft of a local area agreement]:

Lord Geddes: If Amendment No. 209ZBA is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 209BA due to pre-emption.

[Amendment No. 209ZBA not moved.]

Lord Geddes: I could have saved myself the breath.

[Amendment No. 209BA not moved.]

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 209C:
	Clause 108, page 69, line 25, after "authority;" insert—
	"( ) other non-statutory partners to the local area agreement;"

Baroness Hanham: This amendment is similar to one that was discussed earlier. I echo the concerns of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations that there needs to be a statutory duty on local authorities to ensure that this increasingly important sector is engaged and consulted properly when targets are being set. In moving this amendment, I declare an interest as the chairman of the English Volunteering Development Council.
	The amendment would place the voluntary organisation on the same statutory footing as other partner authorities. The Minister to some extent responded to this earlier, but we want to emphasise that the voluntary non-statutory sector is becoming increasingly important to local authorities. It is now delivering a large part of critical services, and much of the voluntary sector is contracted to provide services to local authorities. However, it is still made up of volunteers—people who give their time to do the work, who should be included in what is going on. The Government have said that they cannot deliver the services to local communities without the input of the voluntary sector, and we all know that to be the situation. I am sure that everybody would agree that this sector is a vital component of the local strategic partnerships and the local area agreements, and its importance will only increase as time goes on. It is worrying that no status is given to the voluntary sector in the Bill. This amendment is quite similar to one tabled by the Liberal Democrats. I beg to move.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Amendment No. 209CAA would do exactly what the noble Baroness has just outlined. It also gives the Minister an opportunity to outline exactly what the Government's expectations are of the relationship between local authorities and the voluntary sector, with regard to not only local area agreements but best value sustainable community strategies and all the other statutory arrangements that pertain.

Lord Smith of Leigh: I have Amendment No. 210 in this group. I am grateful for the comments of my noble friend earlier on my Amendment No. 205 on further education. I recognise that schools are different, although the principle of involving schools in LAAs is important. I welcome the comments that she made about statutory guidance, and I hope that she will tell me that this will also apply to schools.
	The amendment proposes a mechanism by which schools would be involved. From the comments that my noble friend made, one thing that we need to remember is that partnership is a two-way street. We need to ensure that schools and further education are involved in the processes of developing LAAs as well as expected to implement them. I hope that my noble friend will respond by saying how the Government think that schools will be involved in the LAA process.

Lord Greaves: I have one amendment in this group, which is Amendment No. 209CAC. This group is about the bodies that will be consulted when the local area agreements are being put together. We are probing what,
	"such other persons as appear... to be appropriate",
	actually means.
	I previously suggested that local strategic partnerships should be a formal part of the local area agreement and among the partners, and I was given reasons why that should not be the case. I am now suggesting that they should be statutory consultees. I remind the Minister that we are talking not about one local strategic partnership in two-tier areas but about perhaps seven in Cumbria—that is six districts plus one county—about nine in north Yorkshire and 13 in Lancashire—that is 12 districts plus one county. So it is a lot of people.
	The Government themselves said in their statement of intent that district LSPs are expected to,
	"act as the overarching co-ordinating partnership"
	in that district,
	"to take responsibility for cross-cutting issues"—
	which presumably are all the partnership issues—
	"and ... ensure that district-level plans such as the Sustainable Community Strategy and the Local Development Framework take account of county-wide priorities".
	If that is so then they ought to be consulted as of right. I have to say that "ensure" is a strange word to use there, but we will leave that for the moment. This is to probe further the status and role of LSPs at district level, in what are inevitably going to be horrifically complex and convoluted county-wide local area agreements, if that is what we get.

Lord Tyler: I support the points that my noble friend Lord Greaves has just made but from the perspective of a different part of the country. In Cornwall we have a very similar situation to the one he described—the LSPs are inevitably complex because of the number of participants. However, there are some general points here that need to be carefully addressed and analysed.
	I heard the Minister refer just now to a "sustainable and flexible framework". The difficulty that we are all faced with is that by developing a flexible framework you can leave some very loose ends. The dilemma constantly facing Ministers when they are trying to provide the right framework for local government is that they cannot be so directive that they are producing effectively a corset of restrictions while at the same time trying to insist on a level of delivery and consultation that is sufficiently flexible to enable the local authority to use its own intelligence—which we hope it will always have—to deal with local circumstances. All these amendments form a pattern. We are trying to devise a "sufficiently flexible framework", to use the Minister's own expression, while not being so directive that we do not allow changing circumstances to provide changing solutions over the years.
	I am reminded of the old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So often in this building, in both Houses, we try to devise a system that is not only flexible but also tries to provide a clear intention on the legislature's behalf so that those responsible for delivery can do their very best to meet the required targets. Every time I come into this Committee I am ever more fearful of the legislation's consequences, because it is an extremely complex Bill. I am very glad that I am no longer, and have not been for many years now, a local authority member let alone a local authority officer. I can see that a new generation of local authority officers will have to interpret this legislation in order to meet the requirements that Parliament has laid on them.
	In this Bill we are not getting on the right side of the balance, and I accept that it is a very difficult balance, between providing a flexible framework and ensuring that the consultees in this case are as widely drawn as possible, while recognising the facts at local level. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that that balance has been recognised and that the Bill incorporates it.

Baroness Andrews: This debate on the notion of partnership, especially as it concerns the voluntary sector, very much illustrates the notion of boundaries. We recognise the realities of how things are done and how they could be done better. It is not as though we have presented a Bill that we have invented from scratch. We are building on successful practice in local authorities. We are working with local government and the Local Government Association. This is also a challenge laid down by Michael Lyons. There is some prehistory to this to which we are responding. It means working in new ways and it will not be as simple as we would like, but the challenges of the future are not simple either. We need to use the skills and imagination that we have across the statutory and voluntary sectors. That is what this is about. I am very aware of the situation in Cornwall. It is a very good example of the voluntary sector playing a critical role in a child poverty strategy and it is an example that other parts of the country could well learn from.
	Amendments Nos. 209C, 209CAA and 212RA concern how to establish credibility in relation to the voluntary sector while not overburdening it. This group of amendments would require the responsible local authority when preparing the LAA or the sustainable community strategy to consult non-statutory local area agreement partners. That is achieved in the Bill. Clause 108(2)(a)(ii) already provides that the responsible authority must consult,
	"such other persons as appear to it to be appropriate"
	during these preparations. The relevant word is not "may" but "must".
	The question has been raised as to the sort of organisations that might be appropriate. That will be entirely for the local area to decide—that is where the discretion will lie—and its decision will be based on experience and ambition. However, the amendments would remove that discretion so that it would have to consult all non-statutory organisations in the area. That clearly does not make sense. We build in discretion so that it knows who the key delivery partners from that sector are. We have the experience of the LSPs, 80 per cent of which have voluntary sector umbrella organisations among their membership. Nearly two-thirds involve businesses. We have a great deal of experience on which to draw. I think that we can rely on the common sense of local authorities to do that.
	Local strategic partnerships are where the collective intelligence and experience of making local area agreements resides. The ones with which I am associated and have watched in action bring together an extraordinary range of dedicated, committed and experienced people. They know what they want to achieve in their local areas and by and large they know how to do it. For the first time they have been able to work together to show how they complement and add value to each other's work. That will continue because there is no other body like the LSPs. They will have to contribute their experience and be part of the formative process of making the LAA. There is no choice in that regard. However, for the reasons I explained, we cannot put this in statute. We cannot make them named partners or cannot refer to them as statutory consultees because they are not legal entities—they are partnerships. But, my word, they will be consulted because they will have to be. We shall make that perfectly clear in guidance if anyone is in any doubt, but I do not think that there will be any doubt at all.
	I have absolutely no disagreement with my noble friend on schools. I believe passionately that schools are at the heart of our communities. We ask an inordinate amount of them and they contribute an inordinate amount to the welfare of the community far beyond what is provided in the school day and in the buildings. The 18 statutory early years and education performance targets will form part of every local area agreement. They are built up from the statutory targets that are set each year for local authority maintained schools. Schools are engaged in local partnerships in many different ways such as through children's trusts and the Children and Young People's Plan. That all feeds into the sustainable community strategy.
	Section 38 of the Education and Inspections Act places a duty on school governing bodies to have regard to the Children and Young People's Plan. A number of strategies make it clear that schools are involved in place shaping activity where it is appropriate. That is the point. It is a matter of burdens and effectiveness. Some local authorities have well in excess of 300 schools. Many of them are small primary schools which have a very limited capacity to contribute to strategic level discussions, as they would admit themselves. To place a duty on responsible local authorities to consult or co-operate with them without discretion would add a huge burden and huge bureaucracy. However, schools will be involved in many different and more effective ways.
	I hope that the Committee is satisfied with those remarks.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply. Earlier we discussed the impact on residents of registered social landlords—a matter we shall come back to. The Minister's advice was that they were not an authority or a body within the terms of the clause. The same has now been said about the voluntary and third sector. Here we have two major players in local communities which are being left on the branch on the basis that they are so important they are bound to be consulted. Voluntary organisations are not at all comfortable that that will happen unless they are added to those bodies which must be taken into account in local area agreements, and whether they are part of local strategic partnerships is not what we are talking about.
	We have a problem here in that two major bodies which have a big investment in local areas are not to be included in the Bill. I think I have understood the Minister correctly, and we will probably come back to this because it is important. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 209CA had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
	[Amendment No. 209CAA not moved.]
	[Amendment No. 209CAB had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
	[Amendment No. 209CAC not moved.]

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 209CB:
	Clause 108, page 69, line 33, after "being" insert—
	"( ) the community strategy of each district council is a county in which there are a county council and district councils."

Lord Greaves: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 210A and 212MB in the group. Amendments Nos. 209CB and 212MB refer to community strategies at the district level, while Amendment No. 210A refers to the extent to which targets may be varied at the district level or at some other sub-county level. Again, I am talking mainly about two-tier areas. I should say that I have just discovered a misprint in Amendment No. 209CB. It should read:
	"the community strategy of each district council in a county in which there are a county council and district councils."
	not "is a county", as printed in the Marshalled List. No doubt someone will put that right.
	I am becoming increasingly confused because I am told that local strategic partnerships, the bodies responsible for preparing community strategies, do not exist in any legal sense and therefore cannot be included in the Bill. The Minister has suggested that they are an informal arrangement, which seems extraordinary when the strategies are produced by the LSPs and vast amounts of money are disbursed by central government through them. I had not understood that previously, and I shall inquire about it because there seem to be some contradictions here.
	Community strategies are produced by both district and county councils. The purpose of Amendment No. 209CB is to ensure that the local area agreement has regard to the district community strategy, and not just the county one. Clause 108(2) currently reads:
	"In preparing the draft local area agreement, the responsible local authority must ... have regard to ... its community strategy prepared under section 4 of the Local Government Act 2000".
	That is reasonable. So the responsible authority, the county council in a two-tier area, has to have regard to its community strategy prepared under Section 4 of the 2000 Act. However, that section applies identically to counties and districts, and, so far as I can tell, the community strategies of counties and districts have equal status.
	District councils and their LSPs—working together, one hopes, but not always—put a great deal of time and effort into producing their community strategy and into attempting to carry out its outcomes. A large amount of consultation takes place and a large number of people are employed in producing it. These community strategies are inevitably much more locally based than county ones and it would seem sensible for the local area agreements to take account of them in each district.
	Amendment No. 212MB applies to a revision proposal in exactly the same way as Amendment No. 209CB refers to the preparation of the community strategy. It covers the same thing and so I shall say nothing more about it.
	This leads on to the question of targets and how far they can vary within a local area agreement in different parts of the responsible authority. The Minister earlier said that they can have as many targets as they wish over and above the 35 designated targets and implied that they could vary from locality to locality. So, to take a North Yorkshire example, you could have different targets in Craven than in Scarborough to take account of the different circumstances in the Yorkshire dales, the Yorkshire coast or, indeed, the Selby coalfield.
	The purpose of Amendment No. 210A is to probe how far the designated targets, although they may refer to the same things across a widespread county, can have different targeted outcomes in different parts of the county. For example, the Minister referred to anti-social behaviour—I do not know what is going to be in the national targets and I do not know who does—as being perhaps a local target but the national Government might think that reducing worklessness is worthy of being a designated target. Yet different parts of such a large county could have different levels of unemployment, as we used to call it—or "worklessness" as it is now—so could the target in Burnley be different from the targets in Wyre or the Fylde coast, for example, where the circumstances might be very different?
	Equally, the health of people in various parts of these widespread counties might be quite different. For example, in the old cotton towns there is a backlog of lung disease and heart disease as a result of the conditions in which people worked in the mills—the cotton dust, the damp atmosphere and so on—so the targets for chest diseases might be different in Burnley and Accrington from other parts of Lancashire. Can those targets vary within a county? If they cannot, then the one-size-fits-all nature of a local area agreement would make it utterly ridiculous and unworkable. I could quote many other examples but I think I have made the point quite clearly. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: I hope to give the noble Lord reassurance on both sets of amendments. As regards Amendments Nos. 209CB and 212MB, the noble Lord argued that it is critical that county-wide LAAs are able to reflect the different characteristics of the individual districts. The community strategy, of course, is an expression of local difference and is a vital and accurate evidence base for the local area agreement, which it will reflect to a large extent. Because we want it to be reflected in that way, we have anticipated concerns in regard to district community strategies being represented in the county strategy and we have proposed changes to the way in which a county sustainable community strategy is drawn up in Clause 116 of the Bill to ensure that counties take on districts' priorities in the county-wide plan. If the noble Lord looks at Clause 116(2), he will see that we are providing that the responsible authority, when preparing the community strategy, must consult each named partner in Clause 106, which will include district councils in two-tier areas. The views and the assessments of the needs of the county's various districts will be taken into account by the county-wide sustainable community strategy. We stated that in the local government White Paper, and we will reiterate that in guidance. I hope that will be of some help.
	The noble Lord asked how the designated national targets affect what happens on the ground, which is important. In Amendment No. 210A, he has asked about the scope for targets to address specific geographical areas within the overall county and two-tier authorities. It is absolutely vital that those targets are flexible enough to address particular geographical areas. As the noble Lord said, one size will not fit all, and the example that he used of worklessness is absolutely valid. The characteristics and the needs of districts and of groups of districts will be very different across the country. Therefore, we have made arrangements within the scope of the Bill and the LAAs to set some indicators in the national indicator set to make sure that they are set at the district and neighbourhood level, and they can be picked up in the statutory guidance. The fact that they are designated targets does not mean that they will be national targets that will essentially be applied locally; they can also be set—if that is what the negotiation arrives at—by district and neighbourhood level. I hope that will reassure the noble Lord on both points.

Lord Greaves: I am very grateful to the Minister for looking at this matter quite so seriously, as it is important. This is the first flicker of light that I have seen on the horizon on this vexed issue of counties and districts and two-tier areas. I had picked up the clause that the Minister referred to. Again, the problem is that the county council as the responsible authority will be consulting districts, and that it will not be about the county and the district working it out on the basis of agreement or of equality. It comes back to the question of what is an agreement and, if there is a difference of opinion, how that will be resolved. That is where a lot of the fears are.
	However, the fact that—if I understood what the Minister said, and I will read it carefully—local targets can vary locally at will, and some of the national targets will be variable locally where appropriate, is good news. It gives some hope that the very wide so-called local area agreements, which do not appear local at all to a lot of the people involved in them—they are too wide to be local—nevertheless can be broken down into localities, where they can have some meaning. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 209CC:
	Clause 108, page 69, line 34, leave out sub- paragraph (ii)

Baroness Hamwee: Amendment No. 212 is grouped with this amendment, which is to take out the requirement for a responsible local authority to have regard to the Secretary of State's guidance. In the world in which we live there will be guidance, so I am not expecting this amendment to be agreed to. It was brought to my attention—and no doubt that of other noble Lords—by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities, which have raised questions about the fact that all that is referred to is the community strategy and the Secretary of State's guidance. They say that they had understood from the White Paper that there was to be,
	"a mutual duty on partners to have regard to each others' plans",
	and are concerned that other statutory plans, such as the local policing plan, which, they say,
	"synthesises national and local policing requirements",
	will not have the same weight given to them. There is, of course, the knock-on effect of the distribution of targets, although we have heard a good deal about flexibility of local targets.
	ACPO and APA are concerned about obliging partners to have regard to the Secretary of State's guidance. They say that the relevant Secretary of State in this context will be the Home Secretary, and they believe that there is a risk of confusion and conflict—they would probably feel if they sat through some of these proceedings that there might be a greater risk of confusion than that identified when they wrote this briefing—if government departments are not better co-ordinated than hitherto. The associations say that,
	"policing already has perfectly adequate structures and mechanisms in place to guide partnership working",
	and that there is a risk of duplication likely to lead to greater confusion.
	One might sum this up in a more general way by asking the Minister why there has to be particular regard to the community strategy and what status the other strategies, some of which I have mentioned, have in the programme of drawing up and submitting a draft local area agreement. I beg to move.

Lord Smith of Leigh: In speaking to Amendment No. 212 in this group, I am also concerned that many local partners which participate in LAAs still have responsibilities through their vertical relationships. Health is probably a prime example of this. A local health body would be subject to influence, targets or advice coming down to them from the regional health authority, the NHS nationally, the Department for Health and the Secretary of State himself. This can cause confusion about local targets and targets set from outside.
	In the Bill, all that local partners are asked to do is simply to "have regard" to the targets in the LAA. My one-word amendment helpfully states that they should not just "have regard" to local targets—I am sure that there are laws that we all have regard to—but attain them. We need to put more responsibility on local partners to attain what they want to do.

Baroness Andrews: I am grateful to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for raising these issues. On Amendment No. 209CC, I begin by explaining why the sustainable community strategy is important. It is an evolution of the community strategies that were introduced in 2000. The purpose of the sustainable community strategy, which sets it apart from and above the specific service delivery plans and strategies, is that it must identify and address the most difficult cross-cutting issues affecting the area and respond to community views and priorities. The strategies already have to take account of national and regional priorities and established long-term goals and are the foundation of local area agreements. In future, we see LAAs as being the delivery plan for the sustainable community strategy. Their status sets them apart and beyond the other separate elements.
	The police are absolutely vital partners in all this, and I respect and understand completely what the noble Baroness has said. All community partners will be—and, indeed, are—consulted on the community strategy, which obviously includes the police. As the strategy covers economic, social and environmental issues, it is also very important that other plans made locally should be more specific and less strategic. However, we will set out in guidance how the other statutory plans will relate to each other. That is very important, given what we say about the status of the sustainable community strategy overall.
	The guidance is also important, and I know why the noble Baroness framed her amendment in the way that she did. Nevertheless, in the implementation plan we committed to ensuring that this and all other guidance issued by the Government relating to the White Paper would be phrased strategically. By no means should it set out every last detail on how things should be done, but it should indicate what we conceive to be best practice and solid advice. We are committed to developing that collaboratively, and we will continue to honour that commitment and to work with others—not least, for example, with the LGA.
	Perhaps I may deal briefly with the substantive amendment and Amendment No. 212, tabled by my noble friend. I take on board his argument but the amendment is unnecessary. I understand that the intention behind it is to create a system that holds partners to account for delivery and not just the design of targets. That is clearly important but it is exactly what Clause 110 currently provides for. The clause states that, once the Secretary of State has approved a local area agreement and it therefore has effect, the responsible local authority and each partner authority must, when exercising their functions, have regard to every local improvement target within the local area agreement that relates to it. When they sign up to a particular target, they are saying that they agree with the target and that it lies within the scope of their individual remit to contribute to its achievement. In the light of the previous amendment that we discussed on the voluntary sector, that is a good way of putting it. Therefore, charming although it is, the amendment is not necessary. I am grateful to noble Lords.

Lord Smith of Leigh: The difficulty may be that there will be confusion and differences between the local targets that the local health partners may have signed up to on a voluntary basis. They will think that they are the right ones but may find that something different has been imposed by a regional health body. That is where we need clarification. Which target would the local health partner need to follow?

Baroness Andrews: I think that that can be achieved through Clause 115, which states that the responsible local authority must publish a memorandum relating to the LAA and that it must set out all the targets in the LAA, including who has signed up to delivering them. Once that document is in front of the various partners, they should be in no doubt.

Baroness Hamwee: The Minister tells us that we will get a great deal from the guidance. I reiterate the plea made earlier by my noble friend—it was partly a plea and partly a common-sense comment—

Lord Greaves: A common-sense plea.

Baroness Hamwee: It was a common-sense plea that we need to see a draft if we are to make sense of some of the points which we would otherwise pursue on Report. I should have thought that autumn continued beyond October, so I was a bit more worried than my noble friend was when I heard that we will see the draft guidance in the autumn. I do not know whether State Opening defines the seasons.
	Although he did not put it this way, my noble friend also referred to a new professional class of officers that will be required to make sense of the interrelationship between these things. I should have thought that he was entirely right about that, and it adds to my concern that we should seek to avoid creating a huge amount of paperwork as opposed to good service, which, after all, is what this should be about. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Hanningfield: moved Amendment No. 209D:
	Clause 108, page 69, line 34, at end insert "; and
	( ) the comprehensive area assessment which shall be phased in to coincide with the commencement date for this Chapter."

Lord Hanningfield: The Bill provides for the comprehensive area assessment to come into effect a year after the new local area agreement is initiated. That is surely counterproductive, as the point of the comprehensive area assessment is to provide a performance framework to measure progress of the LAAs.
	There has already been much talk about the need for local area agreements to tear free of the bureaucracy that has impeded their success thus far and to focus on delivering tangible benefits to communities. That intention is welcome. I am sure that it is commended unanimously across the Committee this evening. Although the design of the new LAA may be conducive to that goal, an obsolete, heavy-handed performance framework is likely to be cumbersome and impede its successful implementation.
	We agree with the LGA's contention that there will be significant mutually reinforcing advantages in ensuring that the CAA is introduced alongside the LAA in 2008—none more so than the ability to measure the progress of the LAA, which, as the Bill stands, will be introduced the year before. I also declare an interest in that Essex County Council is one of the very last councils to have a CPA, right at the end of 2008. We are offering to be a pilot for the CAA. It makes absolute sense to be a pilot for the CAA rather than being the very last on the CPA. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will have some sympathy for Essex County Council and for the general thrust of the amendment to introduce the new CAA, which I think we would all welcome alongside the LAA. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: My admiration for Essex knows no bounds. It is at the leading edge of practically every new initiative. It is a wonderful example.
	The CAA will be a crucial piece of local evidence. I hear what the noble Lord said about not wanting anything heavy-handed or clumsy. The whole point of moving away from the comprehensive performance assessment is to settle on a methodology that will cover risk, to ensure that the right things are being inspected and in the right way, and not to overburden authorities. Over the next two years the Audit Commission will work with other inspectorates to develop a detailed methodology for the comprehensive area assessment. I am delighted to know that Essex will be there, with the guidance of the noble Lord.
	The aim is to introduce that by April 2009. As we have to trial what will be possible and effective and to ensure security and the right amount of risk, it is not the kind of thing that we can have in place in time for the new-style local area agreements. However desirable that might be, we have to bow to reality and ensure that when it is introduced, it is as good, robust and sensitive as it can be.
	It is a very important process. The LAA and the local improvement targets must reflect the analysis. However, they are only one of a number of plans and sources of data that local authorities and partners will wish to consider when looking at their performance. I agree with the noble Lord that we do not want to create a rigid and bureaucratic process that details all sources of evidence in primary legislation or imposes an impossible timetable. It is more appropriate that that link is outlined again in the statutory guidance that will accompany the Bill. I take the point made on the previous amendment about guidance. One of the reasons why we put out the statement of intent was so that noble Lords had some sense of the detail and direction. I hope the Committee found that useful and that the noble Lord will be able to accept that explanation on his amendment.

Lord Hanningfield: I thank the Minister for that response. My understanding is that the Audit Commission could be ready for piloting and introducing the CAA in the middle of next year. It seems a bit pointless, right at the end of a much more target-based, detailed process, and when we want to move into the wider partnership basis of a CAA, for those authorities to wait until Christmas next year. I hope that the Minister will look again at the phasing out of the old process and the phasing in of the new one. It seems ridiculous to be doing two at the same time if there is going to be a pilot for the CAA. This is Essex's point of view. Perhaps the Minister might look at the timing and discuss with the Audit Commission what would be a practical way of doing it next year. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 210 and 210A not moved.]

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 210B:
	Clause 108, page 69, line 40, leave out "(including representatives of partner authorities)" and insert "and partner authorities"

Baroness Hamwee: Clause 108(4) provides that, before the Secretary of State issues guidance, she or he must consult,
	"such representatives of local government (including representatives of partner authorities) and such other persons (if any) as he considers appropriate".
	I could have taken out any of the little groups of words here to enable me to probe what is meant by,
	"representatives of local government (including representatives of partner authorities)".
	Some partner authorities are not in local government, so why do they appear to be a subset of local government? The partner authorities are listed in Clause 106, covering a great range of organisations, as we have heard. If they are the organisations listed in Clause 106, can they have representatives? It would be quite difficult to find proper representatives of a historic buildings and monuments committee, Transport for London and a primary care trust, for instance. I am unclear what is in the mind of the Government in this little paragraph. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: I hope that I can reassure the noble Baroness, because I think that she has possibly misread Clause 108(4), which is not at all usual for her. She seems to think that the Secretary of State would have to consult representatives of partner authorities only where they were also part of local government; for example, a fire and rescue authority or joint waste authority. In fact, it provides that the Secretary of State must consult both representatives of local government and representatives of partner authorities. It treats partner authorities in exactly the same way as it treats local government, and I assure the noble Baroness that the amendment is unnecessary and the Bill provides what she wants. That is the meaning of that subsection.

Baroness Hamwee: I am grateful for that. The provision does refer to,
	"such representatives of local government (including representatives of partner authorities)",
	but there we go. I am perfectly willing to believe I have misread it, but I still do not see it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendments Nos. 210C and 210D not moved.]
	Clause 108 agreed to.
	Clause 109 [Approval of draft local area agreement by Secretary of State]:

Lord Smith of Leigh: moved Amendment No. 211:
	Clause 109, page 70, line 6, at beginning insert "where, in addition, it has not been prepared under the terms of section 108(2),"

Lord Smith of Leigh: I withdrew the amendment from its earlier grouping. Briefly, this clause gives the Secretary of State the power to require local authorities to redraft their LAAs but does not indicate the basis on which this decision may be made. This is a probing amendment to see whether the Government will come clean on what they think the reasons would be, if they do not accept the drafting. I suggest that they have not followed the rules earlier, but there may be other reasons. Given the hour, I am happy for my noble friend to write to me on this matter. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: I am very grateful for the opportunity to write.

Lord Smith of Leigh: I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Baroness Hanham: moved Amendment No. 211A:
	Clause 109, page 70, line 6, at end insert "only in respect of national improvement targets"

Baroness Hanham: Amendment No. 211A is part of a group of amendments tabled in my name. Their purpose is to lessen the involvement of the Secretary of State with regard to local area agreements by distinguishing between local and national targets and designations. The Secretary of State's remit allows her the power not only to impose national improvement targets but also locally prescribed targets in each council. This is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, not least because it contradicts the Government's devolution ideals.
	It is not just the sentiment of the legislation that is worrying, but also the process itself. The Local Government Association suggested that it appears cumbersome and unwieldy and is another quagmire that threatens to undermine the laudable intentions of local area agreements. The process needs to be lean and dynamic, but it must above all be deliverable. For the sake of its credibility and value for money, there must be real substance underpinning the initiative. We strongly endorse national co-operation where there are exceptional circumstances, but the powers in the Bill open the floodgates to micromanagement through the targets culture. It passes control to the Government at the expense of locally elected politicians—a situation with which those of us who have worked in local government are all too familiar.
	Without these amendments, the Bill will incorporate yet another example of what local government sees as the mistrust of local authorities: a supposed safety net that stifles innovation and restricts councils in fulfilling their potential. Local area agreements have potential to become highly effective methods of channelling public funds to the areas where they are most needed and to achieve true synergies and co-operation across a number of bodies working together. The Government's much cited rhetoric could have been embedded throughout the Bill. With these amendments, the opportunity is still there. Without agreeing to this amendment and others like it, the Government cannot be seen to be decentralising power and responsibility. We need to differentiate between the national and the local designation and keep the national to the absolute minimum. I beg to move.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Amendment No. 212BA, which is tabled in my name, is a little gem among this large group of amendments. It probes the Minister on a similar issue: the role of the Secretary of State in altering designated targets. The Bill establishes a procedure through which a local authority is required to go if it wishes to amend a target. I should like to give the Minister the opportunity to explain a little more about how this works because the Bill suggests that it is a pretty cumbersome process. If a local authority needed to amend one of these targets, it could be in for a pretty lengthy procedure. Will she also say how this will be done? Will it be done by the Secretary of State in the form of a government regional office? Will there be any indication of how long it might take to alter one of these targets as I can see that it might end up sitting on someone's desk for quite some time? Will she also confirm that these provisions apply to the national targets rather than to the national and the locally agreed ones?

Lord Greaves: I have two amendments in the group. Amendment No. 212CA is on a different issue altogether and I shall speak briefly to it when we get to the clause stand part debate. Amendment No. 212MA appears to be a computer error—at least, that is my excuse.

Baroness Andrews: This is an important group of amendments because it focuses on the role of the Secretary of State and the degree of power in designating local improvement targets and the balance of power between the responsible authority and partner authority in changing local improvement targets as part of revision proposals. They are clearly two areas of concern.
	I will not reiterate everything I said earlier about the making of targets, as I went into that in some detail. All I will say is that we are trying to ensure that all signatories to the agreements, whether it is the Secretary of State, the responsible authority, a named partner, or another voluntary partner, are treated appropriately in the whole process of determining, refining, submitting and revising targets.
	We know that the LAA will comprise a series of local improvement targets, which will have been agreed to, and through that process partners around the table will have identified their local priorities and set targets against them. In doing so, they will have identified which local targets are drawn from the core national policy priorities as identified in the national indicator set.
	When the draft LAA goes to the Secretary of State, via the government office and has been approved, the Secretary of State on behalf of the Government collectively will formally "designate" those targets which are of key national importance and which will have been drawn from the national indicator set. So it is working from the bottom upwards in an iterative way. As I have said, those designated targets will hardly come as a surprise because people have been looking at the indicator set, looking at their local circumstances and relating the one to the other.
	The local improvement targets within the LAA that are not designated remain in the LAA and, vitally, they have equal weight in the agreement; hence the named parties remain under a duty to have regard. They can be amended without the consent of the Secretary of State and will not be reported on to central government. Local improvement targets, which have been signed up to voluntarily by partners who are not named partners in the Bill, are also part of the LAA, but those partners, as we agreed earlier, are not bound by the duty to have regard to the targets.
	That is the model and those are our expectations. This group of amendments, therefore, seeks to differentiate from the outset of the LAA negotiation those targets which are of national importance and those which are of purely local interest, and to treat the two sets of targets very differently throughout the process. However, the distinction between national targets and purely local ones will not always be clear cut. Let me explain. They will need to be teased out in negotiation. For example, Sheffield is in the current feasibility testing. It is looking to tackle health inequalities in relation to the 2010 life expectancy target. The target may be one included as one of the national indicator set. That would make sense as life expectancy is a large target. However, Sheffield has already met the national target and, as such, it may not be designated. There is no need for that. As it wants to continue improving health inequalities in the area, it could include a more stretching or demanding target in its LAA as a local improvement target. That is a way of demonstrating that the LAA is a mechanism not just to address areas of poor performance—to catch up—but also to deliver greater local ambition.
	Amendment No. 209A, which we discussed in a previous group, has a bearing on Amendment No. 211A. It sought to define national improvement targets as,
	"a national target for improvement designated by the Secretary of State in respect of which there shall be a maximum number of 35".
	That amendment and Amendment No. 211A, which would require the Secretary of State to designate national targets only at approval stage, would be unworkable. Amendment No. 209A defines a national target as one that has been designated, while Amendment No. 211A would allow the Secretary of State to designate only a national target; that is, one that has been designated. The process would be circular, and we must be careful not to fall into that sort of trap.
	The bulk of the amendments involve the notion of identifying national targets prior to approval. Amendments Nos. 212A to 212C, 212F, 212G, 212J, 212L, 212Q, 212R and 214A seek to distinguish, prior to approval of the LAA, targets of local as opposed to national interest, and would confine the Secretary of State to the national improvement targets. This would mean that local partners would need to specify which targets in the LAA were of national interest, which would remove the power of the Secretary of State to designate any LAA local improvement target. We would expect the distinction between purely local targets and the small number of national priorities to emerge during the negotiation. However, given the importance of LAAs and the fact that this is the only place where the Secretary of State and local authorities will come together to agree on where the national indicators actually relate to what the local authority is trying to do, it is surely important that the Secretary of State retains this discretion as a backstop to ensure that the right national priorities are reflected. We intend to set out in guidance the practical clearance steps for the LAA so that everyone is clear about what the process will look like. The LAA will evolve out of the process of negotiation.
	On the revision of targets, the effect of Amendments Nos. 212D, 212H, 212K, 212M, 212N and 212P would be that the Secretary of State could designate only national improvement targets. Local improvement targets would therefore be handled exclusively by local partners, who would be the only parties who could amend, add or remove local targets. This would mean removing the power of the Secretary of State to designate any new local improvement targets as part of a revision proposal. Taking away that function, which the Secretary of State exercises at approval, from the revision procedure would severely limit the flexibility of the LAA to respond to changes in national priorities in the lifetime of an LAA. There may be a critical development in, say, climate change, so obviously there need to be some flexibility. The local authority may not choose to take on that new target as part of the LAA and may well have to be prompted by Secretary of State to see the significance of any change and how it might be managed locally.
	Amendment No. 212BA would remove Clause 112(2), thereby allowing local authorities to change targets outside the revision process and thus removing the Secretary of State's involvement. To allow targets to be altered much more flexibly not only affects the Secretary of State's role to designate revised targets but provides for the alteration of designated targets by named partners. Removing this provision would greatly weaken the Secretary of State's ability to ensure that the LAA responds appropriately to changes of circumstance. Again, we would be back in the situation that I described previously. Amendment No. 212MA is consequential on Amendment No. 212H, which I have already discussed.
	Next we come to the balance of power between responsible or partner authorities and targets. The Government agree with the effect that Amendment No. 212E would have. The amendment would allow a local improvement target to be changed or removed with the consent of all partners to which the target relates. I completely agree with that measure, which is why we have already made provision for non-designated targets in Clause 112(4) and (6). Therefore, the noble Lord's amendment, although admirable in principle, is unnecessary. I reiterate, however, that the situation is different for designated targets because they reflect targets of national importance, so the Secretary of State retains the function to approve any changes made to those targets. That distinction must hold.
	Finally, the effect of Amendment No. 212C would be that a responsible local authority could amend or remove a non-designated target only after consulting every person to whom the target related. The local authority would not have to seek the consent of every person as is currently the drafted provision. There is a good reason for providing as we do that undesignated targets can be changed, but only with the consent of each person to whom the target relates and having consulted such other persons. If a target relates to a named partner, it is under a duty to have regard to it. Therefore, it is only reasonable that if a duty is placed on a named partner, that partner authority surely should consent to any change affecting a target for which it is under a duty to have regard to. For example, if a local business or charity voluntarily signs up to a target, it is not under a duty to have regard to it, which is why it needs only to be consulted, but it should not be able to veto change as it is not subject to the same duty to have regard as a named partner.
	In Committee, we have talked a lot about balance. In this arrangement between the Secretary of State and the local authority, between the designated targets and the local targets, we have tried to have coherence and a balance of responsibility with the essential impulse driven by the experience and expectations of local authorities. Although this set of amendments and my response are rather complicated, I hope that noble Lords will be satisfied.

Lord Greaves: I think that the noble Baroness has answered a question that I was going to ask later—so I will not ask it now. As I understand it, locally agreed targets agreed outside the process of setting up an LAA or a revision proposal and agreed just between the partners have to be unanimous. In other words, the partner affected by it can veto it and, if it does that, it does not go ahead. For example, if a county council, which was a responsible authority, proposed a change and the district said "no", it would not happen, but if it happened as part of a revision proposal and went to the Secretary of State, the requirement for unanimity would not be there. Have I read it correctly?

Baroness Andrews: I am not sure that the noble Lord has or that I quite understand the point. The idea of a negotiated process is that everyone is in agreement and that everyone signs up. But I am told that the noble Lord is not quite right, so I will have to look at that and write to him. It is important to spell that process out.

Lord Greaves: I am very grateful for that. The Minister seems to think that national indicators will be set to give an idea of the kind of things that might be designated, but not necessarily, in certain circumstances. There will be no involvement of the Secretary of State until the proposal comes in for the local area agreement or for a revision proposal. At that stage the Secretary of State will designate some of the targets which have been set locally. Is that not the case?

Baroness Andrews: We are talking about two processes. When the targets are negotiated with the local authority by the regional office representing the Secretary of State they will have regard to the 200 indicators. We used the example of worklessness, but we could use reducing childhood obesity, which might be sufficiently important across the country for every local authority to have a plan for dealing with it. They will have a very good idea of those designated targets because they will reflect those national priorities.
	Those national targets will be formally designated when they go to the Secretary of State, but the whole local area agreement will go to the Secretary of State to be signed off. It will be a formal process because the regional offices will be involved. When there is a revision, the Secretary of State will come into the process. The LAA will request a revision and there will be negotiation about why it is necessary and which of the targets have changed. As I have said, in a national emergency, there would be a new designated target to which all local authorities should have regard. This is all speculative, but the first process is the essential process.

Lord Greaves: I am most grateful for that response. It explained how discussion and negotiation will work between the responsible authority and the regional office acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, which will be fundamental to the process but is not obvious from simply reading the Bill. That is what I was trying to tease out of the Minister.

Baroness Hamwee: I have a question after listening to that exchange. I would like to understand some of the terminology. The phrase "the person to whom the target in question is to relate" has been used a good deal. Am I to understand that that is in fact equivalent to "a person subject to the target"? "Person to whom a target may relate" is potentially very wide but, where consent is required, I suspect that one could not go as wide as that, and that it will be someone who is subject to the target.

Baroness Andrews: That is my understanding. It is the person or organisation charged with delivery.

Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for her usual—I was going to say "urbane", but I mean "competent"—reply to an enormous number of questions. This is an important area, because we are in some disagreement about how much the Secretary of State should be involved in the whole question of local area agreements and how much he ought to be able to bring national focus into those agreements.
	There were a great number of amendments, which shifted slightly in different directions; that is the trouble with a mega-grouping. The Minister kindly replied to all of them. I want to read them again and see the exact emphasis, but I must make it clear to the Minister, as I am sure is clear from the amendments, that we are unhappy, even now, about the extent of the role that the Secretary of State will play in local area agreements and the amount of influence that will be wielded in negotiations by the government offices representing the Secretary of State. I feel sure we will come back to this aspect of the Bill in some way, even if not to the same amendments, at the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 211B:
	Clause 109, page 70, line 14, at end insert—
	"(4) A decision by the Secretary of State under subsection (1) shall be sent to the responsible authority within three months of the Secretary of State's receipt of the draft local area agreement.
	(5) If the Secretary of State fails to comply with subsection (4), the draft local area agreement shall be deemed to have been approved."

Lord Greaves: In speaking to the amendment I shall speak also to Amendment No. 212QA, which is the same amendment applied to revision agreements. It is a slightly cheeky amendment that seeks to set a limit on the time the Secretary of State has to respond to a draft local area agreement or a revision proposal. If the Secretary of State did not respond in that time, it would be deemed to be approved as submitted.
	Everyone in local government is used to circumstances in which local authorities do their very best to stick to timetables and deadlines and to get things done expeditiously, and then the application gets stuck in a department and you have to wait and wait. There seems to be no comeback to that. What specifications will be set? What will the timescale be for approving a local area agreement or a revision proposal once it has been submitted? An enormous amount of time and effort is going to go into these things. Whether this is a sensible way to do it or not can be debated but, once they have been agreed, people will want to get on with them and put them into practice. If the agreements get stuck in the department for months and do not come out, that will not do anyone any good. I look forward to the Minister's reply. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: The noble Lord has raised an important point. For the new statutory LAAs to work, there is no doubt that everybody must act in an appropriate and timely fashion. Without a clear understanding of timings, there is the potential for delay and agreements could become out of date. We intend to put the timetable for clearance expected of central government into guidance. That is probably better than putting it in the Bill. We will show how that can be arrived at through partnership. We will also make sure that all the partners are on board when those expectations for timing are set. That will include the behaviour that is expected of central government as well.
	That is all that I can commit to on the record. I cannot give the noble Lord any details of the timetable other than the one month that is specified in the Bill for the designation of targets. However, I acknowledge what he said. We will certainly think about the timetable. If it is in guidance, we will have some flexibility to get it right.

Lord Greaves: I shall give the Minister six and a half out of 10 for that, which is probably a pass. Guidance is better than nothing. It would be nice to know what it is going to say. We will look forward to that with interest. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 109 agreed to.
	Clause 110 [Duty to have regard to local improvement targets]:
	[Amendments Nos. 211C and 212 not moved.]

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 212ZA:
	Clause 110, page 70, line 20, at end insert "but, where such a target is in conflict with a policy set out in an statutory plan or strategy adopted by a local authority, the policy in the plan or strategy shall prevail"

Lord Greaves: This amendment states that if a statutory plan or strategy is adopted by a local authority which conflicts with a local area agreement, the statutory plan or strategy should prevail. It is a probing amendment. The Minister will no doubt say that the conflict to which it refers will never occur, but because there are different processes producing different plans and strategies, I doubt that that is the case.
	The Minister was kind enough to supply me, when I asked a Question on the subject, with a long list of plans and strategies which local authorities were bound by law to produce. I was going to read it out this evening, but in view of the time I shall not do so—the details are in any case set out in her Written Answer in Hansard. I was grateful for that information. It was revealing. My guess is that it was not comprehensive in terms of plans and strategies which may not be in legislation but are in statutory guidance and so on that is sent out to local authorities. There are probably more than she says. Certainly, in the authorities that I know, they add up to a large pile on the shelf. What happens if there is a conflict? I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: It is unlikely that there would be a conflict. It is rather counterproductive to have a conflict in a local area agreement. We are clear that the LAA targets must be derived from the priorities identified in the sustainable communities strategy. That is agreed as the overarching plan only when everybody has agreed what that community needs to sustain itself economically and so on. Local authorities have the opportunity to set out in that strategy the agenda that they believe the area should follow. There is no implication that the commitments which the local authorities have publicly made can be ignored or negated by the process.
	The whole point about the scope of the new performance framework is that it covers everything that the local authority does on its own or in partnership with others. Certainly, central government is not going to be involved in any targets other than the designated ones; that is the only place where the two bits of government will meet. That does not mean that local authorities cannot have their own additional targets, plans or strategies, but central government will not be involved in agreeing them. I would not want to say that this will never happen but, given the fact that these agreements will be the product of so much prehistory and sustained relationships, those sorts of issues will have to be resolved before they come forward. There will be things that people will not be able to agree about and I am sure that they will not end up being identified as targets because, by definition, deliverability will be an issue in such instances.
	I know that the noble Lord is speaking from experience but, with these caveats in place, I hope that we can be fairly optimistic about this.

Lord Greaves: I am always happy to be optimistic but it does not always work out like that. If the Minister thinks that there will not be conflicts and difficulties, she is not necessarily observing the real world that we will see—but we will see it in practice.
	Local authorities nowadays possess great big piles of strategies, plans and all sorts of things and employ loads of people to produce them. Ten or 15 years ago, most of these did not exist, but are the authorities that much better as a result of having all these strategies and plans? I would hope that as a result of local area agreements, if this system comes in and is found to be practical and works, the Government may find that as part of the letting go process to which the Minister referred on our first day in Committee most of these other strategies and plans could be done away with. In my experience, a large number of them are produced in many authorities; they go through the inspections, get the ticks and the rest of it and are then put on shelves and brought out again the next time they have to be revised. Meanwhile, everyone gets on with providing the services and making the investment that everyone was going to do anyway. A lot of people in local authorities are being employed on non-productive work at the moment when they could be redeployed on frontline services, producing things. My fear about local area agreements is that they will make the situation worse.
	I have one final anecdote. When I got back on a local authority three years ago, I was aware of all these things and asked for a copy of them all. I was asked whether I really wanted them because it would be an inordinate use of the council's resources for someone to go around and find them all. We have improved a bit in the past three years and that is no longer the case—or I hope so—but there is a serious problem. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 212ZB:
	Clause 110, page 70, line 20, at end insert—
	"( ) Nothing in this section shall negate the right of elected councillors to have regard to the policies they placed before the electors prior to their election."

Lord Greaves: This may be another cheeky amendment, because it is an attempt to reinstate the importance of democracy. Local authorities are democratically elected bodies and people who get elected to them, even nowadays, do so on the basis of wanting to do things and put through policies. The problem is that when they are elected they find that all these strategies are in place—and in future we will have the local area agreement in place, which will last for three years. It is almost impossible to change anything. One councillor getting elected would never change the world overnight with his ideas, but when there are electoral contests between different parties on different programmes and ideas, and there is a change of control, people expect to see some change.
	The more that local authorities are tied in to the kind of thing implied by local area agreements, which are statutory documents that can be changed only by long drawn-out statutory processes and which then require the agreement of the Secretary of State, it is very difficult to see the purpose of having local elections any more. The real problem is that people stop fighting local elections on policies. It does not matter who gets in—the policies remain the same because they are all embedded and you cannot change them. It is therefore done simply on personalities. As we have seen with some mayoral contests, that produces some odd results. It is happening more and more at local level. It is all done on the basis of personalities. It is increasingly done on the basis of negative campaigning by all the parties, and I am not making political points here at all. That is what is happening in the system. You get elected but find that, whatever you said and whatever you got elected to, you cannot do much about it except as part of a very slow and long-drawn-out process. It is a negation of democracy.
	This amendment is just a gesture of defiance on behalf of old-fashioned local elections where people got elected, knew what they got elected for and, within the next few months, stuck up their hands and voted for something different. You cannot do that any more and it is a real shame. The more we dismantle this incredibly complex and bureaucratic system which is enveloping and engulfing local government, the better it will be. I move a vote of defiance on behalf of local democracy. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: I am very happy to join the noble Lord in his gesture of defiance; I am passionately in favour of local democracy and think that that is what local area agreements are about—not least the democracy of partnership which will require people to work together in ways at which they have not succeeded in the past, for the good of the local community. It seems nothing but more likely that, once those priorities and the needs of local premium are properly articulated, people coming forward for election will have a very clear idea of their duty. Nothing will take away the independent voice of the local councillor. Elected councillors do not by themselves come under the scope of the duty to have regard to LAA targets. We will always have people such as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in local government and they will always be a defiant and important voice. Although we hope that they will subscribe and support LAA targets, the council's role will go far beyond that. I recognise the defiance and think that that is echoed round the Committee.

Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Could the noble Baroness say what would be the position of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, or someone else elected to a council if there was new political control in an authority and they really did not agree with the agreed targets? The targets may not match their political priorities and may not even match their manifesto commitments. Would there be enough of a process for them to do what they were elected to do and change the direction of the council?

Baroness Andrews: As for the social targets that will be negotiated, it is hard to think of a political party that would be for worklessness or childhood obesity. Those targets should stand above party politics because they are in the national interest, and the national interest serves the nation. Most of those targets will be self-evidently important and important locally. If the situation which the noble Baroness describes should come about, there would be an opportunity to revise the targets. Certainly the local targets can be revised at any time at all without reference to the Secretary of State.

Baroness Hamwee: The targets will reflect priorities. Of course nobody will be for worklessness; the issue is how you place the different concerns against one another as well as separately in their own little pigeon holes. That is what politics is so much about—the comparisons and priorities. My noble friends have raised extremely important questions. We have talked before on this Bill about the importance of encouraging people to come into local government and our related structural concerns. If they feel that they cannot affect priorities, that is another disincentive to getting involved and stuck in politically as distinct from, for instance, through a special interest organisation.

Baroness Andrews: I reiterate that these arrangements give added purpose and focus to local politics because the local area agreement visualises what the local area is about and why it is important. But the noble Baroness is absolutely right that if a new set of councillors with different preoccupations and priorities is elected, politics is the language of priorities, in the famous words. They may well seek to have different local priorities and may well feel that anti-social behaviour is a higher priority than something which another party might have elevated above that. Clearly, this will be a matter for local discretion; that is what devolution is about.

Lord Greaves: It does not feel very much like that in local government at the moment. It is right to say that things can be done but we have to do them almost by getting round the system and operating it—I do not want to say fiddle the system—in ways that were not necessarily intended, and it is not easy.
	I ought to respond to the suggestion that there are "lots of people like Lord Greaves in local government". I assure the Minister that I do not think there are, for good or ill. No doubt she is pleased that there are not very many of us here either, especially at half past 10 on a Committee night. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 110 agreed to.
	Clause 111 [Designated targets]:
	[Amendments Nos. 212A and 212B not moved.]
	Clause 111 agreed to.
	Clause 112 [Revision and addition of targets]:
	[Amendments Nos. 212BA to 212E not moved.]
	Clause 112 agreed to.
	Clause 113 [Designated targets:revision proposals]:
	[Amendments Nos. 212EA to 212P not moved.]
	Clause 113 agreed to.
	Clause 114 [Approval of revision proposal]:
	[Amendments Nos. 212Q and 212QA not moved.]
	Clause 114 agreed to.
	Clause 115 [Duty to publish information about local area agreement]:
	[Amendment No. 212R not moved.]
	Clause 115 agreed to.
	Clause 116 [Preparation of community strategy]:
	[Amendment No. 212RA not moved.]

Baroness Hamwee: moved Amendment No. 212RB:
	Clause 116, page 73, line 29, at end insert—
	"(4) In determining whether or how to exercise the power conferred by section 2 of the Local Government Act 2000 a local authority shall have regard to climate change and the consequences of climate change."

Baroness Hamwee: I was going to say that this will reassure those in the Public Gallery who think that we do not do any work, but they have gone. Nevertheless, given the time, it is important that we deal with the next few amendments in a measured fashion.
	In the Local Government Act 2000, local authorities are given what is almost a power of general competence, which can be broken down into having the power to do anything they consider likely to promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of their area. My amendment would require local authorities to have regard to climate change and its consequences.
	The fact that the Greater London Authority Bill, which is coming towards its close, deals specifically with climate change and imposes on the GLA a duty to have regard to these matters made me think that, if it is required for London, it should probably be required of all local authorities. I know that this provision found its way into the GLA Bill part way through its passage, but there are good reasons for that. Concern about climate change, both how to mitigate it and how to deal with its effects, has moved rapidly up the public agenda. Those issues were on the horizon in 2000 and are firmly in view now. This would be quite a substantial provision, but I thought it right to use the Bill to raise the matter at this point. I am sorry that it has come so late in the day, but this seemed to be the part in which to raise it. I beg to move.

Baroness Andrews: The noble Baroness is absolutely right to say that this is an important matter, and it is rather nice to have the memory of the GLA Bill raised at this point. We made it clear in the local government White Paper that councils would have a pivotal role to play in achieving sustainable development and mitigating and adapting to climate change. Indeed, it is a great pleasure to see how many local authorities are doing so, with places such as Nottingham at the forefront. I am completely sympathetic to the aims of the amendment, but I do not think we can privilege any policy, however worthy, above others in the well-being power framework, because it would distort its purpose. Further, it would invite a range of other amendments from those who felt equally strongly about other issues. It would not add anything to the current legislation.
	Section 3 of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006 already places a duty on local authorities when exercising their functions to have regard to reports published by the Secretary of State on ways in which they might improve energy efficiency, increase microgeneration, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, alleviate fuel poverty and so on. At this moment, the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is consulting on the shape that report will take, but it is anticipated that it will set out steps that local authorities can take to do all those things through land-use planning, building control, transport and waste management, housing and so forth, particularly in improving energy efficiency. Things are happening fast in this area, and a whole range of actions will help local authorities to take forward these issues.
	With that information, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee: It would wake some people up if I did not do so. I realise that the current climate change Bill will deal with these matters, but I do not agree that this should not be dealt with on its own. However, I shall not develop the argument at this point. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	Clause 116 agreed to.
	Clause 117 [Orders under Part 1 of Local Government Act 2000: Wales]:

Baroness Andrews: moved Amendment No. 213:
	Clause 117, page 74, line 14, after "England";" insert—
	"( ) in subsection (2)(a) and (b), after "authorities" insert "in England";( ) in subsection (2)(c), after "authority" insert "in England";"

Baroness Andrews: Clause 117 amends Part 1 of the Local Government Act 2000, which is concerned with the promotion of social, economic or environmental well-being. Sections 6 and 7 of the 2000 Act will, as amended by Clause 117, confer on Welsh Ministers equivalent powers to the Secretary of State to amend any enactment that requires a local authority to prepare a plan or strategy. However, as the Bill is drafted, when exercising these powers the Secretary of State must follow the super-affirmative procedure but Welsh Ministers need follow only the affirmative procedure. Amendment No. 214 will correct that anomaly so that Welsh Ministers must also follow the super-affirmative procedure. I am grateful to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for drawing that unintended anomaly to the attention of the Committee.
	Amendment No. 213 is an improving amendment. Section 6 of the 2000 Act provides that the Secretary of State can, by order, amend, repeal, revoke or disapply any enactment which requires a local authority to prepare, produce or publish any plan or strategy. Clause 117 confines the Secretary of State's powers to England, with the equivalent powers conferred on Welsh Ministers in respect of Wales. The amendment further clarifies the extent of the Secretary of State's powers in Section 6 of the 2000 Act. I beg to move.

On Question, amendment agreed to.

Baroness Andrews: moved Amendment No. 214:
	Clause 117, page 75, line 7, at end insert—
	"( ) After section 9 insert—
	"9A Procedure for orders under section 7
	(1) Before the Welsh Ministers make an order under section 7 they must consult—
	(a) such local authorities in Wales,(b) such representatives of local government in Wales, and(c) such other persons (if any),as appear to them to be likely to be affected by their proposals.
	(2) If, following consultation under subsection (1), the Welsh Ministers propose to make an order under section 7 they must lay before the National Assembly for Wales a document which—
	(a) explains their proposals,(b) sets them out in the form of a draft order, and(c) gives details of consultation under subsection (1).
	(3) Where a document relating to proposals is laid before the National Assembly for Wales under subsection (2), no draft of an order under section 7 to give effect to the proposals (with or without modifications) is to be laid before the National Assembly for Wales until after the expiry of the period of sixty days beginning with the day on which the document was laid.
	(4) In calculating the period mentioned in subsection (3) no account is to be taken of any time during which the National Assembly is dissolved or is in recess for more than four days.
	(5) In preparing a draft order under section 7 the Welsh Ministers must consider any representations made during the period mentioned in subsection (3).
	(6) A draft order under section 7 which is laid before the National Assembly for Wales must be accompanied by a statement of the Welsh Ministers giving details of—
	(a) any representations considered in accordance with subsection (5), and(b) any changes made to the proposals contained in the document laid before the National Assembly for Wales under subsection (2).
	(7) Nothing in this section applies to an order under section 7 which is made only for the purpose of amending an earlier order under that section—
	(a) so as to extend the earlier order, or any provision of the earlier order, to a particular authority or to authorities of a particular description, or(b) so that the earlier order, or any provision of the earlier order, ceases to apply to a particular authority or to authorities of a particular description."."
	On Question, amendment agreed to.
	Clause 117, as amended, agreed to.
	Clause 118 [Health and social care: joint strategic needs assessments]:

Lord Greaves: moved Amendment No. 214ZA:
	Clause 118, page 75, line 10, at end insert—
	"( ) If a responsible local authority includes two or more PCTs, subsection (1) applies separately to the area of each of them."

Lord Greaves: Subsection (5) of Clause 118 states:
	"The responsible local authority must publish each assessment of relevant needs prepared under this section in relation to its area".
	The amendment probes what happens in large authorities—I return to the theme of large authorities and how local area agreements will be carried out within them—where there is more than one primary care trust. Will there be one needs assessment for the whole area or separate ones for each PCT area? How will it work? I beg to move.

Baroness Hamwee: The other amendment in this group stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Scott. It would provide that the Secretary of State should publish comments on each assessment of relevant needs and on the funding to meet them. I was prompted to table this amendment, not because I have any doubt that working together is a good thing—indeed, co-operation between the social services, other parts of local authorities and the health services is hugely important to the clients—but because of the "cost shunting", which I think is the term used, by the health services on to local government. Colleagues currently serving in local government tell me that this exercises them very much and has become a big problem, particularly recently. The amendment would not address it, but at least it will bring the issue into the light of day. I feel it is important to raise it.

Baroness Andrews: As noble Lords will know by now, we are trying to drive coherence across an area, and that coherence will obviously involve health and social care as well as all the other things that local authorities do. It is very important that there is one joint strategic needs assessment. That is new, and it is extremely important that it is there, with all the PCTs joined, if there is more than one PCT in an area. The suggestion that somehow each PCT should negotiate separately would completely undermine the purpose of that. The PCTs in a local authority's geographical boundaries will feed into the same joint strategic needs assessment, and that will help to identify the health and well-being needs of the whole area.
	The second amendment in the group is essentially counter to the devolutionary thrust of the Bill in two respects, although I appreciate why noble Lords have tabled it. First, Amendment No. 214ZB would require the Secretary of State to publish and comment on the needs of the local population identified by the joint needs assessment. Obviously, that is not appropriate, since this will be locally owned, locally driven and locally designed. Secondly, in terms of resources, it follows that it is for the local authority and its partners to agree on how they wish to use the resources available to them. That is what local authorities should do, and that is how they will translate the findings that come out of the strategic needs assessment into targets and how the targets are going to be delivered. The whole thing does hang together. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Greaves: That was a more disappointing answer than the last one that I got on diversity, but I will read Hansard carefully. I do not want to continue the debate tonight, except to say that PCTs are interested in their own areas, and it is not clear to me whether they will have to come together before they negotiate with the wider authority. The noble Baroness said that she did not want them to negotiate separately. I am not sure about "separately", but each PCT will want to negotiate on behalf of its own area, and it will not be interested in another area on the other side of a far-flung county, perhaps 50 miles away. There is thought to be had there but, in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
	[Amendment No. 214ZB not moved.]
	Clause 118 agreed to.
	Clause 119 [Interpretation of Chapter]:
	[Amendment No. 214A not moved.]
	Clause 119 agreed to.
	Clause 120 agreed to.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
	House resumed.

Further Education and Training Bill

The Bill was returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments and with a privilege amendment. It was ordered that the Commons amendments be printed.
	House adjourned at 10.48 pm.